but it undertakes to keep watch for the security of the
commonwealth when surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the
dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls,
among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar
guillemots, which continually caress each other; the egoist
she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade;
and, by her side, another female who adopts any one's orphans,
and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she
conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by
side with the penguins, which steal one another's eggs, you have
the dotterels, whose family relations are so "charming and
touching" that even passionate hunters recoil from shooting a
female surrounded by her young ones; or the eider-ducks, among
which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the Savannahs)
several females hatch together in the same, nest. or the lums,
which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is variety itself,
offering all possible varieties of characters, from the basest to
the highest: and that is why she cannot be depicted by any
sweeping assertion. Still less can she be judged from the
moralist's point of view, because the views of the moralist are
themselves a result--mostly unconscious--of the observation
of Nature.

Coming together at nesting-time is so common with most birds
that more examples are scarcely needed. Our trees are crowned
with groups of crows' nests; our hedges are full of nests of
smaller birds; our farmhouses give shelter to colonies of
swallows; our old towers are the refuge of hundreds of nocturnal
birds; and pages might be filled with the most charming
descriptions of the peace and harmony which prevail in almost all