Water Pipit. 93 



in all this district. Here, too, we are not unlikely 

 to find a flock of Alpine Choughs ; noisy chatter- 

 ing birds, with yellow beaks, strong and stout 

 and with a downward curve ; their legs are bright 

 red and their plumage a bright and glossy black. 

 The Cornish Chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus, 

 Linn.), is also found in the Alps, but it is much 

 less common ; it is a larger bird, and its bill, 

 which is long and red, is very different from the 

 shorter and stouter yellow beak of the smaller 

 species. The Alpine Chough is the characteristic 

 corvus of the Alps, as it is also of the Apennines, 

 and its lively chatter, breaking suddenly on vast 

 and silent solitudes, recalls to memory the familiar 

 jackdaw we left behind us in the Broad Walk at 

 Oxford, or in the tower of our old village church. 

 But as I think of those delicious pastures, 

 nestling under the solemn precipices, and studded 

 in June with gentians, primulas, anemones, where 

 each breath of crystal air is laden with the aro- 

 matic scent of Alpine herbage, I seem to hear 

 one favourite song resounding far and near a 

 song given high in air, and often by an invisible 

 singer ; for so huge is the mass of mountain 



