A Rising Generation. 43 



in the heat, stretches away to the heaving tide lazily 

 lapping the shining silver of the shore. In the distance, 

 dimly seen across the broad brown water, rise the faint 

 far outlines of the hills of Devon. 



Suddenly a bird gets up with feeble flight, and utter- 

 ing a cry of distress. It is a ringed plover. She is 

 hurt : follow her a few paces. Her wing is broken ; she 

 will be easily caught. But still she contrives to keep 

 just out of reach, and fluttering a few yards now and 

 then, lures her pursuer on and on round the point ; 

 when, rising on swift, undamaged wings, and whistling 

 a cool clear note of triumph, she sweeps away far 

 inland, and makes a wide circuit back to where she 

 left her little family cowering among the pebbles. 



In the steep side of the Holm that lies like a gray 

 cloud down on the horizon, a brood of young falcons 

 are even now looking down on the clamorous gulls 

 busy on the reefs below them. The rocky ledge is 

 strewn with fur and feathers relics of many a red- 

 handed foray. 



The old birds range far and wide for their fierce 

 brood. The little farms on the mainland know them 

 well. Many a young pigeon goes over from their 

 dovecotes to the island, in the clutches of a peregrine. 



It is an ancestral nesting place. From this niche in 

 the dark rock, stained with warm touches of lichen, 

 hung with clusters of golden samphire with here and 

 there a patch of blossoming thrift or a few tall spikes 

 of sea lavender, generations of these noble birds have 



