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186 reveals itself; not to some few merely which may seem, at first sight, to be in opposition to these, but, looked at more closely, are seen to be sequences only, quite reconcilable with them, and not obstructing them in any way. In a word, we must think of the stream and flow of the river, not of some eddies in it, or a back-wash here and there. Though it does not seem to be, yet the water that makes these is really going the way that the stream is, and our "noblest numbers," when closely analysed, are found to be "sculduddery" after all.

But can I be quite sure that it was a strange guillemot, and not one of the two parents, that acted that little scene with the chick which I have described? It is easy, certainly, as I know by experience, for a bird to go off the ledge without one's noticing it—even under one's very nose—if one's eye is not actually on it all the time, and that, I suppose, mine was not. Again, the plain parent has just made a very quick return with another fish, though not, I think, quite so quick as the other one would have been, had it been he and not a stranger bird that I had seen on the ledge all the while. All I can say is that it certainly looked like what I supposed was the case, and I feel pretty sure that it was so; but I have never seen such a thing before, and it is more