From Frank Ludwig Grossmann
John Farquhar
(Letters, 6 March, p 51)
mentions a study on ducks that you
published 16 years earlier than the recent Indiana State University research on
ducks’ habit of sleeping with one eye open (This Week, 6 February, p 8).
Both studies reminded me of a very much earlier observation. Geoffrey
Chaucer, in the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales, wrote some 600 years
ago:
Whan that April with his showres soote…
…and the yonge sonne
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Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen all the night with open yë.
Nice, France
