for he has many ways of doing so, and it is not very often that he will repeat the same thing twice in succession. Sometimes he dips so smoothly and still-ly down that one seems hardly to miss him from where he was; there is just a swirl on the stream—which seems, now, to represent him—and that all but silent sound, so cool and pleasant, as of water sucked down into water. Or, swimming smoothly down the current, he stops suddenly, brings the neck stiffly and straightly forward, with eye fixed intently, severely on the water—piercing down into it as though making a point—and then down he goes with a click, almost a snap, flirting the water-drops up into the air with his tiny little mite of a tail. I have seen it stated, I think, that the dabchick has no tail, or that he has no tail to speak of. I shall speak of it, for I have seen it enter largely into his deportment. When, as I say, he dives like this, suddenly, it may be flirted up with such vigour that, mite as it is, it will send a little shower of sparkling drops to 20 feet away or more. It may be said that it is not so much the tail as the whole body that does this. I say that the tail has its share, and a good share, too—more, perhaps, than is quite fair. At any rate, I have seen the prettiest little drop of all whisked right off the tip of it, and the sun shining more upon that one than any of the others—and that, I think, is having a tail to speak of. But when swimming along quite quietly, the dabchick's tail, instead of being cocked or flirted up like the moor-hen's, is drawn smoothly down on the water so as not to project and thus interfere with its owner's appearance, which is that of a little, smooth, brown, oiled powder-puff, "smooth as oil, soft as young
