June 10—Out walking early this morning—a sort of farewell parade as I am sailing for Weihaiwei at 10 am.—I was fascinated by the vast number of birds to be seen everywhere, and my eye was attracted to the peculiar positions which different birds adopt when alarmed: the natural instinct of every bird is to take to flight when alarmed, but a careful observer may note a definite stiffening of the body, either in a horizontal or vertical direction, which is a bird's very first reaction to fear: ground-feeding birds such as Pheasant, Partridge and Quail, stiffen horizontally and remain in that position until the alarm is over others follow the method of the Bittern and straighten up vertically: the Bittern (of which we see very little here) is a very specialized bird with up-and-down stripes to match the reeds; he puts his head and bill up in the air, sways gently with the reeds from side to side and thus becomes practically indistinguishable from his surroundings. All of which thoughts reminded me of the Ostrich,. that most maligned of all God's creatures. Ever so many years ago some half-baked traveller came back to England and spread the libel that the Ostrich when in a state of fear buries his head in the send and thus foolishly thinks he is hidden: hence we have such expressions as "the foolish Ostrich"—an "Ostrich-like policy" and the libel is repeated from day to day. The Hon. Member says in Parliament, when replying to the Hon. Member opposite...."my honourable friend follows the policy of the Ostrich and, when questioned, hides his head in the sands of ill-founded rumour" or words to that effect. Yet the fact remains that no Ostrich ever did such a foolish thing: when
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.