258 THE CRANE KIND. 



points are endowed with three pair of nerves which 

 pass from thence to the roof of the mouth, and enable 

 them to feel the worms and insects which are conceal- 

 ed in marshy grounds. As this class reside in watery 

 places, their constitution seems peculiarly calculated 

 for the cold ; for they evidently make choice of the 

 most rigid climates, and migrate to this country when 

 other birds remove from hence ; and the few of their 

 number, which reside among us, retire to the top of 

 the bleakest mountains to breed, where they remain 

 with their young family until winter gives evident no- 

 tice of its approach. The curlew, the woodcock, the 

 snipe, the godwit, the grey plover, the green and the 

 long-legged plover, the knot, and the turnstone, merely 

 visit us in the winter, and quit us at the beginning of 

 spring, retiring to the mountains of Prussia, Sweden, 

 Poland, and Lapland, where they form their nests and 

 bring up their young. As birds of this species all run 

 swift, and feed upon the ground, so they are all found 

 to nestle there ; their nests are made without the 

 slightest art, and the eggs laid in some little depres- 

 sion of the earth, or amongst the blades of long grass, 

 that seem scarcely sufficient to preserve them from the 

 damps below ; they never lay more than four in num- 

 ber, and are generally hatched in fourteen days. 



It is inherent to birds of this class to quarrel, parti- 

 cularly at certain periods of time ; and those who take 

 them in nets, for the purpose of fatting, are obliged 

 to confine them in a complete dark room, or, could 

 they obtain the sight of each other, death alone would 

 terminate their disputes. Most of them are considered 

 as real delicacies, and form a part in the entertain- 

 ments of the great. 



