336 GRALLATORES. 



the tarsi, — two circumstances which permit them to wade to a 

 certain depth without wetting their plumage, and thus to procure 

 food by means of their neck and beak, the length of which is 

 generally proportionate to that of their legs. Such as have the 

 beak strong live on fish and reptiles ; those in which it is feeble, 

 on worms and insects. A few feed partially on grains and herb- 

 age, and these live at a distance from water, frequenting open 

 plains and extensive downs. 



The principal food of the whole race consists of animal sub- 

 stances. They have membranous stomachs and not gizzards, 

 though some have a slight approach to the latter structure. These 

 last occasionally feed upon vegetables : they pick up seeds from 

 the tops of high plants, and eat the leaves and tender shoots. 



"The GralLne in their general haunts are associated with wild- 

 ness and infertility. They give life to those places which man 

 neglects. They take up the ground where the field birds end, and 

 occupy it as far as a walking foot can go in search of food — to the 

 uppermost part of the hill that will bear bent and rushes, to the 

 farthest shallow in the lake and the river, through the sedges and 

 reeds by the marsh, and on the beach as far as the ebbing tide 

 retires. Mountainward they approach the haunts which are 

 occupied in succession by the black game, the grouse, and the 

 ptarmigan ; fieldward they border with the partridge and the 

 rook, and nearer the waters they are the immediate neighbours 

 of the swimming birds. The pastures which they occupy are more 

 under the influence of the seasons than either the richer or more 

 cultivated parts of the country. The supply of food along the 

 shores is most abundant in the winter, as the waters, being in a 

 state of stronger agitation, detach and cast to the strand a greater 

 number and variety of esculent matters; so that, though the birds 

 may be driven inland during the violence of a storm, they speedily 

 throng back to the beach when it is over, to feast on the supplies 

 which have been there collected. Their food consists of various 

 matters, — of the spawn of fishes, of fry in a very young state, and 

 of innumerable small animals that come ashore upon uprooted 

 seaweeds or are to be found under loosened stones, and in the 

 general accumulations of sand, ooze, and other dcbj-is, which the 

 turbid waters roll about while agitated, and ultimately leave on 

 the beach, deposited in the due order of gravitation, and conse- 

 quently with the organic portion uppermost. Nor are the land 

 floods unserviceable in adding to this winter store of food, for they 

 sweep from the beds and out of the torn banks of the rivers a v^ast 



