36 BIRDS IN LONDON 



pleasure to numberless visitors to the parks, 

 especially to children ' and nursemaids ; but let 

 us not have ducks only — a great multitude of 

 ducks, to the exclusion of other wilder and 

 nobler birds. 



Personally, I am very fond of these ducks, 

 although I have never had one on my table, and 

 beheve that I am as well able to appreciate 

 their beauty and feel an interest in their habits 

 as any of the gentlemen in authority who have 

 decreed that the carrion crow shall go the way 

 of the raven in Hyde Park. I love them because 

 they are not the ducks that have been made 

 lazy and fat, with all their fine faculties dulled, 

 by long domestication. They are the wild duck, 

 or mallard, introduced many years ago into the 

 Serpentine. Doubtless they have some domestic 

 taint in them, since the young birds reared 

 each season exhibit a very considerable variation 

 in colour and markings. Those that vary in 

 colour are weeded out each winter, and the 

 original type is in this way preserved ; but not 

 strictly preserved, as the weeding-out process is 

 carelessly — I had almost said stupidly — per- 

 formed. 



The thinning takes place in December, and at 



