was not so wet as it would have been after a heavy rain-fall. The
horses stepped carefully from flax bushes to "nigger heads" (as the
very old blackened grass stumps are called), resting hardly a moment
anywhere, and avoiding all the most seductive looking spots. I
thought my companion must have gone suddenly mad, when, a hawk
rising up almost from beneath our horses' feet, he flung himself off
his saddle and cried out, "A late hawk's nest, I declare!" And so
it proved, for a little searching in a sheltered and tolerably dry
spot revealed a couple of eggs, precisely like hens' eggs, until
broken, when their delicate pale green inner membrane betrayed their
dangerous origin. It is chiefly owing to this practice of laying in
swamps that the various kinds of hawk increase and thrive as they
do, for if it were possible to get at them, the shepherds would soon
exterminate the sworn foe of their chickens and pigeons. They are
also the great drawback to the introduction of pheasants and
partridges, for the young birds have not a chance in the open
against even a sparrow-hawk.

Although it is a digression, I must tell you here how, one beautiful
early winter's day, I was standing in the verandah at my own home,
when one of our pigeons, chased by a hawk, flew right into my face
and its pursuer was so close and so heated by the chase, that it
flung itself also with great violence against my head, with a scream
of rage and triumph, hurting me a good deal as it dug its cruel,
armed heel into my cheek. The pigeon had fluttered, stunned and
exhausted to the ground, and, quick as lightning I stooped to pick
it up; so great had been the impetus of the hawk's final charge that
he had never perceived his victim had escaped him. The cunning of
these birds must be seen to be believed. I have often watched a
wary old hawk perched most impudently on the stock-yard rails,