APPENDICES 
435 
yet never to be overlooked since its own activity arrests atten¬ 
tion. With legs as long as a plover, for which (or a courser) 
you may mistake it, it runs as fast as you can walk, and when 
it finally rises, displays broad white-barred wings that recall 
those of a hoopoe. Certhilauda remains associated with some 
of the most desolate scenes on earth ; yet (though synchromatic) 
he is never invisible no /what is tenfold more important— 
does he ever dream that he is so. 
One more example of reckless reasoning and I am done. It 
refers to a bird-genus with which I have long been intimate— 
the Divers. These, it is argued, by virtue of being white beneath, 
are thereby rendered invisible to their prey— i.e. y the fish that 
swim below. Now whatever rules may regulate the eye-powers 
of subaquatic creatures, we anglers at least are well aware that 
those of fish are keen in the utmost. Yet it has been seriously 
contended that the big sea-divers ( Colymbi ), the goosanders, 
guillemots, or grebes, will—-merely because they are white 
below—-escape detection by fish swimming beneath them [a 
cormorant or a darter, by parity of reasoning, because they 
are black ?] The whole proposition, besides being initially 
absurd, rests upon a total misconception of the life-system 
of these specialised birds and a failure to grasp the measure 
of their subaquatic capacity. Professional divers such as 
the Colymbi will cover the length of Regent Street in 
three or four dives, and that at a speed that is probably 
double or treble that of the fish themselves. The contest 
is a matter of speed, and the fastest wins. But never 
a thought do these masters-of-the-art waste upon the few 
paltry dozens of scared fish which—having already observed 
their enemy swimming right overhead—have long ago sought 
secure shelter. The diver, being no fool, only commences his 
search for prey when well beyond eye-range of his point of 
submersion. Even a human fisherman is careful so to present 
his lures that the quarry may see them, but not himself. It 
is only when the angler’s invitation has been rejected that he 
moves forward, exposing himself to the recusant in the expecta¬ 
tion of finding more complacent victims farther on. 
Certain morals suggest themselves—that before formulating 
academic rules, a sympathetic insight into the conditions of 
wild-life is essential; secondly, that the application of human 
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