290 ANSERES. 



On this subject, and on the seasonal resorts and 

 habits of these tribes we cannot refrain from pre- 

 senting to our readers the following charming pic- 

 tures geographically drawn by Sir William Jardine. 

 After noting the great proportion borne by this 

 Order in the British Fauna, and remarking, that 

 while thousands in summer seek our precipitous 

 coasts and headlands as breeding stations, others, 

 scarcely less numerous, flock in winter to our bays 

 and marine inlets, he thus proceeds : 



" The contrast of these localities at the different 

 seasons is most striking : rocks standing far in the 

 ocean's void, and precipices of the most dizzy 

 height, to which all approach by land is cut off, 

 possess a dreary solitude for seven or eight months 

 of the year ; a few Cormorants seeking repose 

 during the night, or some Gulls claiming a tem- 

 porary shelter or resting-place from the violence of 

 the storm, are almost the only, and then but occa- 

 sional, tenants. In the throng of the season of 

 breeding, a very different picture is seen : the 

 whole rocks, and sea, and air, are one scene of ani- 

 mation, and the various groups have returned to 

 take up their old stations, and are now employed 

 in all the accessories of incubation, affording les- 

 sons to the ornithological student he will in vain 

 look for elsewhere. The very rocks are lighted 

 up, and would seem to take a brightness from the 

 hurry around, while the cries of the inhabitants, 

 alone discordant, harmonise with the scene. 



" During the same season, upon the low sandy 

 or muddy coasts, or extensive meres, where the 

 tide recedes for miles, and the only interruption 

 on the outline is the slight undulation of some 

 mussel-scalps, the dark colour of some bed of 



