CHAPTEK XLIII. 



Whelks and Periwinkles An Ossianic Reading The Sea-shore after a Storm The Rejecta- 

 menta of the Deep An amusing Story of a Shore-Searcher Severity of Winter Wild- 

 Birds' Levee Woodcock Snipe Blue Jay. 



IT has been our habit for many years [January 1875] to take our morn- 

 ing walk along our beautiful sea-beach, one of the coziest and prettiest 

 silver-sanded bays on the West Coast, descending now and again, 

 when the tide is at ebb, to search for objects of interest in marine 

 animal and vegetable life, in every likely spot along what Ossian calls 

 " traigh na faoch," the periwinkled shore. Our friend and neigh- 

 bour Dr. Clerk, by the way, in his admirable edition of the great 

 Celtic bard, renders it " the shore of whelks," and in a note gives 

 us to understand that he thinks the expression so unpoetical, infra 

 dig., and every way inappropriate, as almost to warrant its rejection 

 as a corruption of the text. As a conjectural emendation, he 

 suggests " traigh nafaobh," the shore of spoils, as probably the true 

 reading. Faoch, however, is not the whelk, but the periwinkle or 

 wilk. The whelk is the Buccinum undatum, the cnogag or cnocag 

 of the Gaels of the Western seaboard and Hebrides. The wilk or 

 periwinkle is tine faoch orfaochag; and to it and not to the whelk 

 the passage clearly refers. The whelk or cnogag rarely allows itself 

 to be left behind on the beach by the receding waters, even in 

 spring tides, when ebbs are at their lowest. The periwinkle, 

 on the contrary, sticks, regardless of the receding waves, to its 

 place or stone or algae stem and frond, until the ebbing waters 

 have returned, as return he knows full well they shall ; so that at 

 any time after half ebb, a suitable shore, rich in algae, presents a 



