THE PEEWIT. 179 



tunities of observing the dissimilarity in the mode of 

 life, the manners, and plumage of the birds. I know 

 not any bird that lays so large an egg, in proportion to 

 its size, as the snipe. 



A few pairs of the peewit (tringa vanellus) visit an- 

 nually some of our larger plowed fields to breed ; but 

 they are so frequently disturbed by those necessary pro- 

 cesses of husbandry, hoeing and weeding, that they 

 seldom succeed in the object of their visit. On our 

 adjoining heath they escape better, and bring off many 

 of their young: but the larger portion of them keep 

 their station on the banks and dikes of the great drains 

 and sewers in the marsh lands ; and the traveller, who 

 happens, in the spring of the year, to pass along any of 

 the roads bordering upon these haunts, where many 

 pairs are settled, will long remember the wearying and 

 incessant clamor of these birds, which, rising as he ap- 

 proaches, wheel about him in an awkward, tumbling 

 flight, accompanied by the unremitting, querulous cry 

 of "peewit, peewit," continued by the perseverance of 

 successive pairs, as long as he remains near their habi- 

 tation ; which generally being a flat, aguish, uninterest- 

 ing country, where little is heard but the whispering of 

 the wind in the reeds and sedges, the teasing monotony 

 of this bird gives a very peculiarly dreary and melan^ 

 choly character to parts of our lowland roads. In some 

 counties these cold, wet districts go by the name of 

 " peewit or pewety lands." At this period of the year, 

 the bird is bold and fearless, and menaces the intruder 

 with all its vociferous powers, when he approaches its 

 haunts; but the broods being fledged, the families unite, 

 form large flocks, and retire to open meadows, unin- 

 closed commons and downs, feeding on slugs and worms, 

 and become wild and vigilant creatures. It is well 

 known that the glareous liquor or white of the egg of 

 this bird, upon being boiled, becomes gelatinous and 

 translucent, not a thick opake substance like that of the 

 hen ; a circumstance that is likewise observable in the 

 eggs of the rook, and of many of our small birds. The 

 latter are not sufferers by it ; but the eggs of the poor 

 rook, though bearing little resemblance to those of this 



