XIV THE EMIGRANTS 199 



lands where insects are always to be found, such 

 as Spain and Southern Italy, the isles of the 

 Mediterranean and Africa. This is the season for 

 the pleasure of shooting and for succulent roasts of 

 small birds. 



The Calandrelle, or Creou, as Provence calls it, is 

 the first to arrive. As soon as August has begun 

 it may be seen exploring the stony fields, seeking 

 the seeds of the Setaria, an ill weed affecting culti- 

 vated ground. At the least alarm it flies off, making 

 a harsh guttural sound sufficiently expressed by its 

 Provencal name. It is soon followed by the whin- 

 chat, which preys quietly on small weevils, crickets, 

 and ants in old fields of luzern. With the whin- 

 chat begins the long line of small birds suitable 

 for the spit. It is continued in September by 

 the most celebrated of them — the common wheat- 

 ear, glorified by all who are capable of appreciating 

 its high qualities. Never did the Beccafico of the 

 Roman gourmet^ immortalised in Martial's epigrams, 

 rival the delicious, perfumed ball of fat the wheat-ear 

 makes when it has grown scandalously obese on an 

 immoderate diet. It consumes every kind of insect 

 voraciously. My archives as a sportsman-naturalist 

 give a list of the contents of its gizzard. All the 

 small people of the fallows are in it, — larvae and 

 weevils of every kind, crickets, chrysomelides, grass- 

 hoppers, cassidides, earwigs, ants, spiders, hundred- 

 legs, snails, wire-worms, and ever so many more. 

 And as a change from this spicy diet there are 

 grapes, blackberries, and cornel-berries. Such is the 

 bill of fare sought incessantly by the wheat-ear as 

 it flutters from clod to clod, the white feathers of its 



