on I gleaned from "Begum" and "Flap," both of whom seemed
perfectly mad at seeing such an array of scarecrows on their favourite
playground.

It was a lovely mild day, and I spent best part of it at La Fauconnaire,
rabbit and gull shooting, bringing home for my day's sport as many as I
could fairly carry. Leaving them in the storehouse I fed "Eddy," and
proceeded to perform the same office for the goat and pigs, but they
were nowhere to be seen. After a fair amount of searching I gave them up
for the time, and proceeded to take in my stuffed wonders, but alas, the
pigs and goat had been before me, for in the morning I had not properly
latched the lawn gate, and they had got in and created awful havoc. Many
of my specimens the pigs had actually eaten, others they had disjointed
and mangled in such a manner as to be perfectly useless, while what they
had not fallen foul of my Quixotic goat had, by spiking them with her
single horn, till she had had the satisfaction of knocking the stuffing
out of them. What was left of my most magnificent collection now looked
as if a charge of dynamite had played havoc with it. Thus my friends and
the world in general were prevented from gazing upon one of the most
curious collections of birds, beasts, and fishes that have ever been
stuffed (with whatever was handiest) since the art of taxidermy was
introduced.

The stormy petrel during rough weather used to be a frequent visitor to
the Perchee Channel, skimming just above the dark waves so close to the
surface, as to appear to walk up a wave, rise above its crest, and then
walk down into the valley of water on the opposite side. I shot several
specimens, two of which I stuffed, but they were both eaten by those
horrid pigs.

Oyster-pickers were quite plentiful, and I quickly discovered that they
might also aptly be termed limpet-pickers, for they seemed to take these
shell fish as their staple food. The _modus operandi_ of feeding is to
pounce down upon a rock which the receding tide has left bare, and with
a single sharp blow with its beak, detach a limpet, and turning it mouth
upward, pick out the fish at its leisure. If it failed to detach the
limpet at once it would go on to another, knowing that when once
disturbed the limpet requires great force to detach it. Oysters lie in
deep waters where they are inaccessible to these birds, so whence is
their name derived?

Then there were various kinds of divers, the principal of which c