168 CHAPTER OF MISCELLANIES. 



even they have not added to their numbers. I have neither seen nor heard a 

 single individual, but as the present week has been more favourable, I do not 

 expect we shall be many days without some arrivals. — J. D. Salmon, Tket/ord, 

 Norfolk, April 22, 1837- 



A Dog suckling Lambs. — Startling as the following facts may appear, the 

 reader may rely on their perfect authenticity : — The farm of Airdrie, parish of 

 Kirkbean, which contains almost every variety of soil, has been for some time in 

 the possession of Mr. R. A. Oswald, of Auchincruive. The present, as the 

 reader knows, has been a most disastrous lambing season, and although Kirkbean 

 is a mild coast parish, even there the loss of stock has been very great. For a 

 number of weeks the careful shepherds have been as much exposed as his Ma- 

 jesty's mail-guards, when the country is blockaded, feeding weak ewes and pick- 

 ing up deserted lambs, which they carry to their masters, or their own houses, 

 where they are nursed as carefully as orphan children who are reared from neces- 

 sity on the pan and spoon. A hound noticed what was going forward, and though 

 14 months have elapsed since she suckled pups, strange to say, milk returned to 

 her in such quantities that she has already been the means of succouring and 

 saving more than sixty woolly nurslings that might otherwise have perished. 

 Night and day she may be seen lying on sheepskins before the kitchen fire, with 

 half-a-dozen lambs around her, distinguishing the weakest from such as are^ome- 

 what stronger, and devoting to them the most assiduous attention. Repeatedly, 

 when some of the invalids have got a little round, they have been re-conveyed to 

 the hill side with the view of mothering them, and nearly as often the bitch, when 

 left free, has not only sought out and distinguished her former nurslings, but 

 carried them home again with the greatest care, although the distance is more 

 than a mile. After the servants have retired to rest, Mr. M'Cracken, while 

 reading in the parlour, sometimes lifts his candle and visits the kitchen, to see 

 how his woolly family, with their hairy nurse, are getting on. The Lambs, when 

 they see the light, are painfully affected, bleat piteously, and run about the floor ; 

 but their guardian soon puts every thing to rights by poking them gently with 

 her nose back to their former position. Although a more remarkable circumstance 

 has rarely, if ever, fallen under our notice, and, though some may affect incredulity, 

 there are witnesses whose testimony proves it to be true to the letter. — Dumfries 

 Courier. 



Distinctions between the Sandpipers and the Tringas. — The distinctions 

 between the Sandpipers and the Tringas appear at first sight to be so slight, that 

 it may perhaps be well to notice them here. They are these : — The nasal groove 

 (or furrow extending from the nostril, towards the tip of the bill) is not near so 

 long in proportion in the Sandpipers as it is in the Tringas ; indeed generally it 

 is actually longer in the latter than in the former. There is also another con- 



