134 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. (CHAP. XVI. 
it would be an amusing variety in sporting to watch the bird as 
he dived.and pursued the fish in clear water. We might take a 
hint from our brethren of the Celestial Empire with some ad- 
vantage in this respect. 
A curious anecdote of a brood of young wild ducks was told 
me by my keeper to-day. He found in some very rough, 
marshy ground, which was formerly a peat-moss, eight young 
ducks nearly full-grown, prisoners, as it were, in one of the old 
peat-holes. They had evidently tumbled in some time before, 
and had managed to subsist on the insects, &c. that it contained 
or that fell into it. From the manner in which they had under- 
mined the banks of their watery prison, the birds must have been 
in it for some weeks. The sides were perpendicular, but there 
were small resting-places under the bank which prevented their 
being drowned. The size of the place they were in was about 
eight feet square, and in this small space they had not only grown 
up, but thrived, being fully as large and heavy as any other 
young ducks of the same age. 
In shooting water-fowl I have often been struck by the fact. 
that as soon as ever life is extinct in a bird which falls in the 
sea or river, the plumage begins to get wet and to be penetrated 
by the water, although as long as the bird lives it remains dry 
and the wet runs off it. I can only account for this by sup- 
posing that the bird, as long as life remains, keeps his feathers 
in a position to throw off and prevent the water from entering 
between them. This power is of course lost to the dead bird, 
and the water penetrating through the outer part of the feathers 
wets them all. This appears to be more likely than that the 
feathers should be only kept dry by the oil supplied by the bird, 
as the effect of this oil could not be so instantaneously lost as to 
admit of wet as soon as the bird drops dead, while if the bird be 
only wounded they remain dry. 
