CRUELTY OF RURAL AMUSEMENTS. 155 



hollow of the rugged chalk hills, containing six pale 

 blue eggs. With us the wheatear stays only to hatch 

 her brood. When this is effected, and the young suffi- 

 ciently matured, it leaves us entirely, and by the middle 

 of September not a bird is found on their summer sta- 

 tions. They probably retire to the uplands on the sea- 

 coasts, as we hear of them as late as November in these 

 places, where it is supposed they find some peculiar in* 

 sect food, required by them in an adult state, and not 

 found, or only sparingly, in their breeding stations, in 

 which the appropriate food of their young is probably 

 more abundant. Thus united on the coasts, they can 

 take their flight, when the wind or other circumstances 

 favor their passage, all of them departing upon the ap- 

 proach of winter. 



Partial as I am to the habits and all the concerns of 

 the country, I regret to say that rural amusements, con- 

 nected as they commonly are with the creatures about 

 us, are frequently cruel ; and that we often most incon- 

 siderately, in our sports, are the cause of misery and 

 suffering to such as nestle around our dwellings, or fre- 

 quent our fields, which, from some particular cause or 

 motive, become the object of pursuit. I say nothing 

 of the birds known as game, as perhaps we cannot ob- 

 tain them by less painful means than we are accustomed 

 to inflict, and the pursuit is frequently conducive to re- 

 creation and health; but the sportsman's essaying his 

 skill on the swallow race, that " skim the dimpled pool," 

 or harmless glide along the flowery mead, when, if suc- 

 cessful, he consigns whole nests of infant broods to 

 famine and to death, is pitiable indeed ! No injury, no 

 meditated crime, was ever imputed to these birds ; they 

 free our dwellings from multitudes of insects; their 

 unsuspicious confidence and familiarity with men merit 

 protection not punishment from him. The sufferings 

 of their broods, when the parents are destroyed, should 

 excite humanity, and demand our forbearance. But the 

 wheatear, in an unfortunate hour, has been called the 

 English ortolan, and is pursued as a delicate morsel 

 through all its inland haunts, when hatching and feeding 

 its young, the only period in which it frequents our 



