DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. AD 
presence. He fired twice before we got out 
of sight, but, to judge from his motions, 
without success. A man’s happiness is per- 
haps of more value than a plover’s, though 
I do not see how we are to prove it; but my 
sympathies, then as always, were with the 
birds. 
Within a week or so I received a letter 
from Mrs. Celia Thaxter, together with a 
wing, a foot, and one cinnamon feather. 
“By this wing which I send you,” she be- 
gan, “can you tell me the name of the bird 
that owned it?” Then after some descrip- 
tion of the plumage, she continued: “In the 
late tremendous tempest myriads of these 
birds settled on the Isles of Shoals, filling 
the air with a harsh, shrill, incessant ery, 
and not to’ be driven away by guns or any 
of man’s inhospitable treatment. Their 
number was so great as to be amazing, and 
they had never been seen before by any of 
the present inhabitants of the Shoals. They 
are plovers of some kind, I should judge, 
but I do not know.”’ On the 16th she wrote 
again: “All sorts of strange things were 
cast up by the storm, and the plovers were 
busy devouring everything they could find; 
