no In Dutch Water Meadows. 



see anything of these and other waders which 

 only a generation ago were common in England, 

 we must turn our backs on home, and look to 

 countries where unreclaimed land is, in proportion 

 to population, greater than it is with us. 



Slowly or quickly, the same process of extermi- 

 nation is going on everywhere. The Dodo and 

 Great Auk have disappeared. The Ground Parrot, 

 the Kiwi, and the Bison are disappearing. 

 The northern half of Texel, not long since 

 the chief of European breeding stations for 

 long-legged birds, is drained and ploughed, and is 

 Eerland " Eggland " no longer in anything but 

 name. 



But places are still, under good guidance, to be 

 found where the shadow seems to have stood still, 

 and where as in Prospero's Isle the air in spring 

 and early summer is " full of noises, sounds and 

 sweet airs," as if all the electric bells and flutes in 

 world had taken flight together, and where the in- 

 truding listener's ears are all but boxed with the 

 wings of indignant Peewits and Redshanks. It was 

 in such a spot that we found ourselves on the 3rd of 

 June. 



We had crossed by Rotterdam and spent an after- 

 noon in the Museum at Leyden, inspecting, under 

 the guidance of Dr. Jentinck, the Director, some of 

 the most precious of the treasures there. A Duck 

 and other birds believed to be unique, or almost 

 unique, examples of extinct species ; the Pigmy 

 Hippopotamus from St. Paul's River ; the Banded 

 Bush Buck, unknown until Herr Biitekoffer lately 

 brought it from Liberia, excepting from two im- 

 perfect skins one of them made up into a native 

 African hunting-bag from which had been evolved 



