inst them.

[Illustration: An Eider Colony]

The admirable sense of interval which the wild birds exhibit in their
flight is to be seen also when they move over the surface of the
water, where the fleet of living forms is always so arranged that each
individual does not interfere with its neighbor. I recall with much
pleasure an occasion when, from a ship becalmed in a thick fog off the
southern shore of Labrador, within sound of the breakers, I undertook
to find something about the lay of the land and the chance of
harborage by paddling in a small boat toward the shore. I had hardly
lost sight of the ship when my boat glided into an assemblage of eider
ducks, where the mothers, with their fledgling young, were lazily
swimming to and fro, as if to practise the ducklings in the art of
swimming. Each brood appeared to have its own space of water, and
between each of the chicks there was likewise a less but equally well
measured interval. The same features of orderly association, which I
have just noted in the swimming and flying of these wild birds, may be
seen in a somewhat degraded state in our domesticated varieties of the
group. They all indicate in these forms a keen sense of their
neighbors and a habit of association based upon sympathetic emotions.

[Illustration: Terns Aiding a Wounded Comrade]

The sympathetic quality of our water fowl, at least in that part of
the emotion which leads them to be concerned with the afflictions of
their species, appears to be more distinct than in the case of our
ordinary barnyard fowl. Geese, as is well known, will make common
cause against an intruder from whom harm to the flock may be expected.
Their simultaneous din when anything occurs to arouse their enmity is
commemorated in the ancient myth concerning the aid which they gave in
the defence of the walls of Rome. There are anecdotes apparently well
attested where water fowl have borne away a wounded comrade which had
fallen before the huntsman's fowling-piece. In Smiles's "Life of
Edwards" there is an often-quoted story which appears to be
trustworthy and sufficiently illustrates this point. A hunter, having
shot one of a flock of terns, which fell wounded into the water near
the shore, waded in to seize it. Suddenly two of the terns came to
their wounded companion, seized him by either wing, and bore him
toward the open sea. When these two helpers were weary, the sufferer
was lowered into the water, and, in turn, seized