AMONGST THE SEA-BIRDS. 213 



precisely the scenery of winter on these shallow seas. And as 

 we are in pursuit of birds it may not be amiss to remind the 

 reader that by slightly altering the punctuation of a line (placing 

 the comma after moorland), in the recent editions of the poem, 

 Mr. Tennyson has succeeded in giving a most vivid description 

 of the curlew's flight, seen against the lowering clouds of a 

 wintry sky, 



"As of old, the curlews call, 

 Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall." 



Once outside the mouth of the Humber, the vessel suddenly 

 becomes very lively, where tide and currents meet, and plunges 

 and rolls for a quarter of an hour in a manner to try a lands- 

 man's equanimity ; but the Firefly soon overpasses the broken 

 water, and stretches out into the German Ocean. All this time, 

 beyond an occasional herring gull and a distant glimpse of a 

 great black-backed gull, the only birds we have seen are several 

 of the graceful terns, which breed on the gravel spits round the 

 Spurn lighthouses. The lesser and the arctic tern could be 

 distinguished (sterna minuta and arcticd] ; beautiful members 

 of a beautiful family, whereof we have a dozen species. Their 

 flight and mode of fishing, as they wheel round in graceful 

 circles and then plunge down upon their prey, has earned them 

 the name of sea-swallows, but they do not possess a tithe of the 

 swiftness and agile grace of the swallows proper. Their delicate 

 build and lovely plumage, however, quite compensate for this 

 inferiority. They are occasionally seen inland, but not often, 

 preferring the open sea and any wide extent of marshland to 

 cultivation. After a storm we have, however, noticed them 

 flitting up and down a brook in the centre of Notts. He must 

 be very sea-sick, or very insensible to beauty, who does not love 

 to watch their flight from a vessel's deck, now rising, now 

 skimming the surface of the waves, wheeling, passing and re- 

 passing one another in airy circles, and describing a graceful 



