228 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



" Sea Birds' Bill," can now boast of two more triumphs in the 

 way of protection. The " Wild Birds Preservation Act " of 

 1872, amended in 1876 and 1880, protects the ordinary birds 

 of coppice and woodland during their breeding months, and 

 the "Wild Fowl Act " of 1876 imposes penalties for taking 

 wild fowl between i5th February and loth July. Not merely 

 naturalists, but also all lovers of the country, ought to be sin- 

 cerely grateful for this kindly legislation. 



At Withernsea two large posts are erected to enable ships to 

 try their rate of speed at a measured mile. The Firefly, under 

 steam and sail, but against the tide, made her mile in seven 

 minutes and thirty-five seconds. This quick travelling soon 

 brought us once more to the shoals, sand-banks, lighthouses, 

 and light-ships on and about the Spurn. Running the gaunt- 

 let of these, and avoiding a wreck buoy over a hapless vessel 

 which here went down with all her crew, in the destructive gale 

 of Good Friday, 1876, when the Lincolnshire coast was strewn 

 with wrecks, we left the buoys on our right which mark the 

 channel for Hull, and struck across the Humber for Grimsby. 

 It was such an evening and such a scene as Turner would have 

 loved to paint. A brilliant sunset flooded the Humber with 

 crimson, and brought out in all their vivid colours the green- 

 painted "billy-boys," and smacks with dark-red sails, and red- 

 night-capped fishermen aboard, now falling upon a passing tug, 

 now a stately barque anchored in mid-channel till she could go 

 up the river. As the strong light shone through the crowded 

 masts and busy life of the fish-dock, and danced over the 

 ripples brightening beside the ships at anchor, and then dying 

 away left them dusky ghosts of their former selves, the long 

 line of Lincolnshire coast, with its trees and farmsteads, faded 

 into blue mist, while overhead the moon, almost at her full, 

 glided out of a long cloud, and from the point where we 

 dropped anchor for the night, seemed like a vast riding light 

 suspended near the summit of the tall water-tower. Then it 



