RINGED PLOVER. 87 



Yarmoutli sands, laying its eggs about June in the sand 

 and shingle;" and, from his time until within the last 

 forty or fifty years, it was no doubt plentifully distributed 

 during the breeding season over our entire coast-line, 

 either nesting on the sea-shore or in close vicinity 

 to the sea, on the margins of our tidal streams. Of 

 late years, however, on the coast, as on the warrens, 

 their ntunbers have sensibly decreased, and from causes, 

 which must, I fear, eventually lead to their extinction 

 as shore breeders — the wholesale plundering of their 

 nests, for edible purposes as well as for the cabinets of 

 collectors, and the even less justifiable destruction of the 

 birds themselves during the summer months. In the 

 neighbourhood of Yarmouth, as at Horsey and Win- 

 terton, there are many localities where they bred freely 

 in former times, but which are now entirely deserted; 

 and unquestionably the increased population of our 

 watering places, and for the most part the easy access 

 to them by railroad from the large inland towns and 

 cities, have all tended to destroy the retirement of such 



somewhat ancient date, as we find it thus used in two instances 

 in the Hunstanton " accounts " — " It. pd to ye fowler (xxiiij 

 weke 1525) at Corbetts for iij duss and di of stynts, v spowes, 

 iij whyte plovs, and ij redshanks, and ij sedotterells xvj<J- 

 Also, in the vjth weke, 1533, "Itm iiij sedotterells iij<l- " Sir 

 Thomas Browne also uses this name in some of his letters, but 

 there is little reason to doubt, from his own description of the bird, 

 that the " Morinellus marinus or sea-dotterel," of which he sent a 

 draft to Dr. Merritt on the 6th of February, 1668, (see Wilkin's 

 edition of his works, vol. i., pp. 403 and 405), was in reality the 

 turnstone (Strepsilas interpres). In Kay's edition of Willughby's 

 " Ornithology," we also find, apart from the notice of the " sea-lark 

 (Gharadrius sive Maticula)" [Book iii., p. 311], a tolerably accurate 

 description of " The Turnstone or Sea-Dottrel : Morinellus marinus, 

 of Sir Thomas Brown," to which the editor, alluding to their 

 appearance on the Norfolk coast, adds — " Our honoured friend, 

 Sir Thomas Brown, of Norwich, sent us the picture of this bird 

 by the title of the Sea-Dottrel." 



