138 MIGRATORY WATER-FOWL. 



which is worms, as their bills can no longer penetrate 

 the earth in search of their prey. 



Lapland is a country of lakes, rivers, swamps, and 

 mountains, covered with thick and gloomy forests, 

 that afford, in the summer season, a secure, undisturb- 

 ed retreat to innumerable multitudes of water-fowl 

 of almost every species, which, in winter, disperse 

 over the greatest part of Europe. Wild swans, geese, 

 ducks, goosanders, divers, and other water-fowl, repair 

 to Lapland to pass the summer, where they rear their 

 young, and are daily regaled on myriads of the larvae 

 of gnats, and other insects that abound in the lakes of 

 that country. Few of these tribes breed in England. 

 They return from their northern excursion about the 

 beginning of October, and first hover round our shores, 

 till, compelled by severe frosts, they betake themselves 

 to our lakes and rivers. Some of the web-footed are 

 of more hardy constitutions than others, and_ they are 

 able to endure the ordinary winters of the northern 

 regions ; but when the cold is unusually severe, they 

 are obliged to seek a shelter in our more moderate 

 climate. 



The gannet visits our shores, in pursuit of the 

 shoals of herrings and pilchards that annually migrate 

 into our seas, and sometimes extends her journeys 

 even to the Tagus, to prey on the sardina. Few of 

 the different species of wild geese and ducks breed 



