Peacock : The Beck — A Study. 



261 



trumpets of the greater skull-cap lower down. But I must not 

 name a tithe of the blossoms and plants within sight and reach 

 on a June morning, or my paper will be as interesting to the 

 majority of my readers as the list of a Botanical Record Club. 



Let us imagine that we are directing the four-inch object 

 glass telescope about 350 yards up the stream, where a bend in 

 the beck shows us a length of its course, and that we are look- 

 ing out for what we may observe, not caring in the least 

 whether we study one thing or another. You can watch the 

 water voles, or, as they are popularly called, water rats, at 

 your leisure. Perched on a small stone that juts out from the 

 bank is one pretty little fellow, ready drawn up for a dive. About 

 a foot below, a few inches under water, something is moving 

 over the sand. Our friend takes a sudden header and rises 

 a second or two later, swimming rather lower than usual in the 

 water, and gaining the side, easily climbs up to his resting place 

 again with a six-inch eel in his mouth. Two bites through the 

 head settle the question whether this very slippery morsel shall 

 escape or not, and then he eats it deliberately, beginning with 

 the head. But with his meal hardly commenced he disappears 

 with a sudden spring into his hole just below on the right, and 

 we are left for a moment or two in doubt as to what can have 

 frightened him away* Doubt is soon satisfied in this matter, 

 for into the field of vision comes soaring a noble heron, in the 

 act of taking a magnificent circular sweep with his long power- 

 ful wings, before he alights by the flags at the further end of 

 the pool beyond the water vole's resting-place. There, if un- 

 disturbed, this most ancient fisherman will sit hour after hour, 

 with his shoulders high up, the neck bent backwards, and his 

 head sunk upon his chest, ever ready for one of those lightning 

 thrusts with his long beak, which neither fish nor fry can 

 escape, if they are once well within reach. Every feather in 

 his long and handsome plumage can be studied at leisure, as it 

 fluffs up over his gaunt but iron framework of light bone and 

 sinewy muscle. The little vole fears him as the Hindoo dreads 

 the man-eating tiger, for when the heronsew is hungry he will 

 ilmost anything, provided it is instinct with life. Even the 

 eternal digger, the little mole, does not escape his sharp eyes in 

 trost\- weather, when the ponds are all shut up by ice. The 

 great problem is to know when the heron is not hungry, so the 

 water vole gives a wide berth to his long grey acquaintance, 

 who appears in the distance to a casual observer to be a bundle 

 of dried flags stranded by the beckside. But the vole lias no 



1900 September i. 



