Visitors from the Sea-coast. 33 



tices sea-birds when it is under water, or when 

 the water is receding and leaving that horrible 

 slime which is so unpleasant to the nose of 

 man ; and in fact there is hardly a wader or 

 a scratcher (to use Mr. Ruskin's term) 1 that has 

 not at one time or another been taken near Ox- 

 ford. Sometimes they come on migration, some- 

 times they are driven by stress of weather. Two 

 Stormy Petrels were caught at Bossom's barge in 

 the Port Meadow not long ago, and exhibited in 

 Mr. Darbey the birdstuffer's window. And a 

 well-known Oxford physician has kindly given 

 me an interesting account of his discovery of a 

 Great Northern Diver, swimming disconsolately 

 in a large hole in the ice near King's Weir, one 

 day during the famous Crimean winter of 1854-5 > 

 this splendid bird he shot with a gun borrowed 

 from the inn at Godstow. During the spring and 

 early summer of 1866, our visitors from the sea- 

 coast were constant and numerous. Even the 

 beautiful and graceful little Tern (Sterna Minuta) 



1 /. e. for the Rasores, in Love's Meinie ; where are some of 

 the most delightfully wilful thoughts about birds ever yet 

 published. 



D 



