i88 Bird-Land Echoes. 



to drag out a few days of torture-full existence. On 

 the other hand, I am not aware of any one having 

 considered them in the light of song-birds, or, lack- 

 ing melody, as ornaments to the waterscape by rea- 

 son of their grace. And I am reminded here that 

 these sand-pipers and allied birds are not all strictly 

 aquatic in their habits. There are some that go to 

 swell the great army of exceptions, one large enough 

 to give a good deal of trouble to the army of rules, 

 if they ever come into conflict As we in all things 

 desire variety, there is in the cries, as they are called, 

 of the plover and the sand-piper music that seems 

 peculiarly fitting to the localities where we hear it. 

 It is exhilarating to see a hundred or more tattlers 

 just skimming the sparkling waves, or darting errati- 

 cally through the air, or running with marvellous 

 speed over the bared sand-bars, and all the while 

 uttering that clear pcct — pcct-ivcct which is as truly 

 musical and satisfying to the bird-lover as any of 

 the more elaborate songs of inland birds. 



In watching these birds, too, we are brought to 

 the wildest and only unchanged spots of the coun- 

 try. It is even now possible to look at the water 

 and the bared sand-bar, and see precisely what those 

 strange and brute-like men saw who walked to and 

 fro along our river-shore thousands of years ago, 

 when the Great Ice Age was slipping back from 

 the then present into geological history, — see water 

 that centuries later was travelled by the Indian's 

 canoe, and land that bore the footprints of wild life 

 which have long since disappeared ; land that was 



