CRICKET AND A DUCK.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." ] SIR,—We were on our summer holiday and were playing stump- cricket in the stone-walled lane that led to our farmhouse : our bat a stick, our wicket a narrow packing-case, our ball the lawn tennis variety. I was wicket-keeper, and a ball slipped past me into the scrub beneath a bramble-bush. I turned, just in time to detect the end of some movement which puzzled -me. Presently I saw two very bright eyes gleaming in the shadow. and identified a sitting duck who needed no instruction in colour-protection, and our ball was peeping out from under her wing. Now the bird furiously resisted its removal, so we selected another for our game; but next time the ball entered
• the scrub I turned in time to see the duck leap from her nest, bill the ball into it, and resume her brooding. Again, furious resistance to -every attempt to abduct the latest little stranger. After the game was over I pitched into the bush a hall of about six inches diameter; in a moment she had it in her nest and was trying to sit on it.- -Alas! she could not keep her balance on such an object, so she gave it the beet she could, a motherly wing. Then came the farmer, delighted-that we had found his "best layer "; so she was turned off in disgrace—oil a nest, that is, containing two eggs and three balls. But she had her revenge at 3 .a.m. next day, and turned the farmer out. of his bed with her -mournful lamentations. Well, Sir, I want to ask your readers: (1) Did the duck (obviously angry) believe that we were playing cricket -with her eggs? (2) What is the size-limit of the-brooding instinct? Would she have tackled a
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