LITTLE BEASTS OF FIELD AND WOOD 



other motion of any kind for several minutes ; 

 then he began to turn his head slightly from 

 side to side, and at the end of ten minutes evi- 

 dently decided that I was some kind of inani- 

 mate natural object, and sat up in the water to 

 stare at me, then turned about and swam a 

 few feet and dived, but without entirely disap- 

 pearing beneath the surface, and coming up im- 

 mediately with a morsel of some kind, which he 

 proceeded to devour. 



Diving again, he got hold of something which 

 required his utmost exertion to dislodge ; but he 

 finally succeeded, and came up with his face plas- 

 tered all over with clinging wet leaves and mud, 

 which appeared almost to stifle him, and carrying a 

 big bulrush or flag-root of some kind, with white 

 roots and green inner leaves, firmly grasped in his 

 teeth. He swam with this to the partly sub- 

 merged root of a tree, where he sat bolt upright 

 and fell to gobbling away at his prize, as if almost 

 famished. After finishing, he leaned over and 



170 



