Ib4 A HISTORY OF 



when the insidious fowler steals in upon their occupations, and fills 

 the whole meadow with terror and destruction. 



As all of this kind live entirely in waters, and among watery places, 

 they seem provided by Nature with a warmth of constitution to fit 

 them for that cold element. They reside, by choice, in the coldest 

 climates : and as other birds migrate here in our summer, their mi- 

 grations nither are mostly in the winter. Even those that reside 

 among us the whole season, retire in summer to the tops of our bleak 

 est mountains, where they breed, and bring down their young, when 

 the cold weather sets in. 



Most of them, however, migrate, and retire to the polar regions, as 

 those that remain behind in the mountains, and keep with us during 

 summer, bear no proportion to the quantity which in winter haunt our 

 marshes and low grounds. The snipe sometimes builds here, and 

 the nest of the curlew is sometimes found in the plashes of our hills : 

 but the number of these is very small, and it is most probable that 

 they are only some stragglers who, not having strength or courage 

 sufficient for the general voyage, take up from necessity their habita- 

 tion here. 



In general, during the summer, this whole class either choose the 

 coldest countries to retire to, or the coldest and the moistest part of 

 ours to breed in. The curlew, the woodcock, the snipe, the godwit, 

 the gray plover, the green, and the long-legged plover, the knot and 

 he turnstone are rather the guests than the natives of this island. 

 They visit us in the beginning of winter, and forsake us in the spring 

 They then retire to the mountains of Sweden, Poland, Prussia, and 

 Lapland, to breed. Our country, during the summer season, be 

 comes uninhabitable to them. The ground parched up by the heat 

 the springs dried away, and the vermicular insects already upon thi 

 wing, they have no means of subsisting. Their weak and delicatel) 

 jointed bills are unfit to dig into a resisting soil, and their prey is de- 

 parted, though they were able to reach its retreats. Thus that season 

 when Nature is said to teem with life, and to put on her gayest live- 

 ries, is to them an interval of sterility and famine. The coldest 

 mountains of the north are then a preferable habitation ; the marshes 

 there are never dried up, and the insects are in such abundance that 

 both above ground and underneath, the country swarms with them. 

 In such retreats, therefore, these birds would continue always, but 

 that the frosts, when they set in, have the same effect upon the face 

 tf the landscape, as the heats of summer. Every brook is stiffened 

 into ice ; all the earth is congealed into one solid mass, and the birds 

 are obliged to forsake a region where they can no longer find subsist- 

 ence. 



Such are our visitants. With regard to those which keep with us 

 continually, and breed here, they are neither so delicate in their food, 

 nor perhaps so warm in their constitutions. The lapwing, the ruff, 

 the redshank, the sandpiper, the sea-pie, the Norfolk plover, and the 

 sea-lark, breed in this country, and for the most part reside here. In 

 summer they frequent such marshes as are not dried up in any part ol 

 ihe year ; the Essex hundreds, and the fens of Lincolnshire. There, 

 in solitudes formed by surrounding marshes, they breed and bring up 

 their young In winter they come down from their retreats rendered 



