004 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



exactly resembling a withered blade of grass — identical with 

 every other one — that however was all as required on protec- 

 tive principles, so ought not to have puzzled me. Taking it 

 all together I felt sure it must represent a bird. But if so its 

 immobility was extraordinary, and I determined to test it. 

 Setting the glasses on the small expanding cane seat of my 

 walking-stick camp-stool I watched the appearance steadily, for 

 half an hour, but could detect no movement. It seemed almost 

 impossible that a bird of any sort, be it never so sitting a one, 

 should not move its head once in that time, but I remembered 

 the Golden Plover, as to which there was no doubt. After this, 

 Whimbrels took off my attention for another ten minutes, but 

 when I looked again, there was the bird's head and neck — 

 outline and shading — just as, and just as motionless as, before. 

 Now I got down from my mound, and fixing my eyes as much as 

 possible on the spot where they had so long been fixed, walked 

 slowly towards it. Nearer I got and nearer, but saw no bird (it 

 was my own eyes now, not the glasses), nearer still, nearer at 

 last than when I had seen it distinctly before there, several 

 days ago, much nearer. The nest then was empty — yes, un- 

 doubtedly empty — still for an absolute proof, I thought I would 

 make the few remaining paces, and did so, and off flew the bird, 

 from the very precise spot, as far as I could judge and locate it, 

 where I had located it all the while. Here was a triumphant 

 resolution of all my doubts, of all my laudable precautions 

 against undue assurance. It had been there all the time, just 

 where a blade of grass had seemed to be. I had only to go 

 back now, reclimb my mound, fix the glasses as before — which 

 would be easy, for the whereabouts of the nest was marked — 

 and the absence of any such blade having the curvature of a 

 bird's head and neck would prove the similitude up to the hilt. 

 All which I did, and looked — and there was the curved blade 

 of grass ! 



The bird had sat somewhere else, and invisible, all the time, 

 whilst I had only looked at an imagined something, and now the 

 whole simulacrum had "softly and suddenly vanished away." 



And yet no, this view can hardly be maintained, in fact is 

 untenable, for, if the curved blade of grass remained, nothing 

 else did that had helped to make the bird — the bird that was on 



