OCT. A FINE OCTOBER MORNING. 17 



CHAPTER XXII. 



OCTOBER. PART II. 



A SEA-SIDE WALK IN OCTOBER. 



Beauty of a fine October morning Departure and arrival of 

 Birds A walk along the Coast The Goosander Golden 

 Eye and Morillon Plovers "Widgeon ; habits of in feed- 

 ing ; occasionally breed in Scotland Sands of the Bay 

 Flounders Herons Curlews, Peewits, etc. Oyster-birds 

 Mussel Scarps Sea View Longtails Mallards Velvet 

 Ducks ; mode of feeding Rabbits and Foxes Formation of 

 the Sandhills ; remains of antiquity found in them Seals 

 Salmon-fishers Old Man catching Flounders Swans 

 Unauthorised Fox-chase Black Game Roe. 



CHARMING to every sense is the first return of 

 spring : but quite as enjoyable is a fine dry 

 autumn day, and far more invigorating is the 

 first frosty morning than the breath of the most 

 balmy spring breeze that ever gave life to bird or 

 butterfly. In this part of the island, too, spring 

 is at best but a capricious and uncertain beauty, 

 and in the course of four-and-twenty hours one is 

 burnt by an almost tropical sun, and cut in twain 

 by an east wind which seems to have been born 

 and bred in the heart of an iceberg. 



Not so in autumn, or at any rate during the 



VOL. II. C 



