RING-DOTTERELS AND PURRES. 49 



handful of sea-wrack, they swarmed and leaped about like 

 fleas some of them being scarcely bigger. These little 

 fellows are the best anatomists in the world : in a single 

 night they will turn a small animal into a more beautifully 

 white, and clean, and perfect skeleton, than can be obtained 

 by any other means. They are of all sizes, from half an 

 inch long to no size at all. 



Our double-barrels had been lying idle in the hollow of 

 our arms for some hours, when a flock of RING-DOTTERELS 

 and PURRES stalled up before us, and, taking a circuit 

 over the sea, settled again, farther on, at the very edge of 

 the rising tide : here they boldly ran into the water for any 

 floating food they might spy, sometimes allowing each little 

 swell to take them almost off their legs. We put them up 

 again and again, and succeeded in bringing down three of 

 them ; but they always fell in the sea, and were lost to us. 

 At last, they altered their minds, and, instead of going our 

 way any farther, took a wider sweep over the sea, and 

 settled behind us. One bird, which it was our particular 

 object to obtain in this journey, we did not even get a 

 glimpse of, the red-legged crow. We had been told by 

 an ornithologist of great accuracy, that it breeds in several 

 parts of the cliffs every year ; but of this there seems 

 to be great doubt ; its chief resort appears to be the 

 Cornish coast.* 



Near Black-Gang Chine I had the good fortune to meet 

 with an insect I never saw before or since. The soil was 

 a kind of loose sand, with a good many short blades of 



* Mr. Hutchinson has just informed me that a pair of the Cornish choughs 

 still frequent the neighbourhood of Freshwater. They have frequently been 

 shot at, and one, which he saw repeatedly, appeared to have had its leg broken. 

 On the opposite coast of Hampshire these birds occur not unfrequently. E. N. 



E 



