70 TRINGA CINCLUS. 



along the shores of the ocean, with great rapidity, in a 

 kind of waving serpentine flight, alternately throwing 1 

 its dark and white plumage to the eye, it forms a very 

 grand and interesting appearance. At such times the 

 gunners make prodigious slaughter among them ; while, 

 as the showers of their companions fall, the whole body 

 often alight, or descend to the surface with them, till 

 the sportsman is completely satiated with destruction. 

 On some of these occasions, while crowds of these 

 victims are fluttering along the sand, the small pigeon 

 hawk, constrained by. necessity, ventures to make a 

 sweep among the dead in presence of the proprietor, 

 but as suddenly pays for his temerity with his life ! 

 Such a tyrant is man, when vested with power, and 

 unrestrained by the dread of responsibility. 



The purre is eight inches in length, and fifteen inches 

 in extent ; the bill is black, straight, or slightly bent 

 downwards, about an inch and a half long, very thick 

 at the base, and tapering to a slender blunt point at the 

 extremity; eye, very small ; iris, dark hazel; cheeks, 

 gray; line over the eye, belly, and vent, white; back 

 and scapulars, of an ashy brown, marked here and there 

 with spots of black, bordered with bright ferruginous; 

 sides of the rump, white; tail-coverts, olive, centred 

 with black ; chin, white; neck below, gray ; breast and 

 sides, thinly marked with pale spots of dusky, in some, 

 pure white; wings, black, edged and tipt with white; 

 two middle tail-feathers, dusky, the rest brown ah, 

 edged with white ; legs and feet, black ; toes bordered 

 with a very narrow scalloped membrane. The usual 

 broad band of white crossing the wing, forms a dis- 

 tinguishing characteristic of almost the whole genus. 



On examining more than a hundred of these birds, 

 tliev varied considerably in the black and ferruginous 

 spots on the back and scapulars ; some were altogether 

 plain, while others were thickly marked, particularly 

 on the scapulars, with a red rust colour, centred with 

 black. The females were uniformly more plain than 

 the males; but many of the latter, probably young 

 birds, were destitute of the ferruginous spots. On the 



