THE WESTERN BEND 
237 
comestibles. Their flavour as a rule resembled boiled 
cotton-wool—with a sprinkling of pins thrown in. Still 
it was a relief from the everlasting tiang, tinned tomatoes, 
and guinea-fowl. 
Correspondingly the whole Nilotic atmosphere is 
“blue” with fishers of every order. There are the native 
savages on bank and boat, plying ceaseless nets, traps, 
lines-—even spears thrown at a venture oft impale a 
20-pounder. Then there are swarming icthyophagi in 
form of bird, beast, and reptile. Pelicans in droves daily 
scoop up fish by tons upon tons; there are literally 
millions of herons, ibises, darters, cormorants, and the 
rest, that—above water and below—incessantly work 
the 1 2 -hour shift—unless “previously full.” Amid such 
society, a sprinkling of otters, ospreys, fish-eagles, and 
kingfishers scarcely count; but the crocodiles count for 
much. The daily toll of these huge and voracious reptiles 
passes calculation. Nowhere else (inland) can there be 
seen such bewildering variety in the piscivorous orders ; 
yet the victims thrive and multiply exceedingly . 1 
I have elsewhere drawn attention to the widely diver¬ 
sified types of equipment designed by Nature to fulfil one 
and the same purpose. It appears a flaccid and altogether 
unsatisfying sort of “science” that extols, as “special 
adaptations,” the mergansers serrated mandibles, the 
darter’s backset teeth, and so on, yet ignores the fact 
that herons, grebes, colymbi, etc., are equally efficient in 
the self-same pursuit although devoid of all such specialised 
armament. 
In the herons, which secure their prey by a direct 
bayonet-thrust, there is a curious kink in the vertebrae 
of the neck; and in the darter this kink is even more 
pronounced—one of the bones being articulated at practi- 
1 It may be worth passing note that there are on Nile no repre¬ 
sentatives of the palaearctic goosanders, mergansers, grebes, colymbi, or 
other divers of that ilk. All these hunt their prey by sight and speed 
alone, and the opaque mud-charged waters of Nile would be abhorrent 
to them ; yet % per contra, darters and cormorants solve the problem. 
