There is a laughable account of one of these chicken-dances, as the Americans call them, in the first volume of the late Mr. T. Keast Lord's 'The Naturalist in British Columbia.'

The oratory closed, the dormitory became the scene of ablutions, arrayings and bedizenings curiously elaborate. To me it was, and ever must be an enigma, how they contrived to spend so much time in doing so little.

Written in spare, pellucid prose, the book reads like a close-to-the-bone memoir.

Now shaves with level wing the deep.