192 DISAPPEARANCE OF CERTAIN BIRDS. 



and, were not its haunts and habits known, we 

 should never conjecture that this bustling fugitive 

 was our long-forgotten spring visitant, the wry- 

 neck. The winter or spring of 1818 was, from 

 some unknown cause, singularly unfavourable for 

 this bird. It generally arrives before the middle 

 of April ; and its vernal note, so unlike that of 

 any of its companions, announces its presence 

 throughout all the mild mornings of this month, 

 and part of the following ; but during the spring of 

 that year it was perfectly silent, or absent from us. 

 The season, it is true, was unusually cheerless and 

 ungenial. 



Some of our birds are annually diminishing in 

 numbers ; others have been entirely destroyed, or 

 no longer visit the shores of Britain. The increase 

 of our population, inclosure, and clearage of rude 

 and open places, and the drainage of marshy lands, 

 added to the noise of our fire-arms, have driven 

 them away, or rendered their former breeding and 

 feeding stations no longer eligible to many, espe- 

 cially to the waders and aquatic birds. The great 

 Swan Pool, near the city of Lincoln, on which I 

 ha/ve seen at one time forty of these majestic crea- 

 tures sailing in all their dignity, is, I am told, no 

 longer a pool ; the extensive marshes of Glaston- 

 bury, which have afforded me the finest snipe- 

 shooting, are now luxuriant corn-farms ; and mul- 

 titudes of other cases of such subversions of harbour 

 for birds are within memory. An ornithological 

 list, made no longer ago than the days of Elizabeth, 



