OCT. A FINE OCTOBER MORNING. 17 



CHAPTEK XXII. 



OCTOBER. PART II. 



A SEA-SIDE WALK IN OCTOBER. 



Beauty of a fine October morning — Departure and arrival of 

 Birds— A walk along the Coast — The Goosander — Golden 

 Eye and Morillon — Plovers— Widgeon ; habits of in feed- 

 ing ; occasionally breed in Scotland — Sands of the Bay — 

 Flounders — Herons — Curlews, Peewits, etc. — Oyster-birds — 

 Mussel Scarps — Sea View — Longtails — -Mallards — Velvet 

 Ducks ; mode of feeding — Rabbits and Foxes — Formation of 

 the Sandhills ; remains of antiquity found in them — Seals 

 — Salmon-fishers — Old Man catching Flounders — Swans — 

 Unauthorised Fox-chase — Black Game — Roe. 



Charming to every sense is the first return of 



spring : but quite as enjoyable is a fine dry 



autumn day, and far more invigorating is the 



first frosty morning than the breath of the most 



balmy spring breeze that ever gave life to bird or 



butterfly. In this part of the island, too, spring 



is at best but a capricious and uncertain beauty, 



and in the course of four-and-twenty hours one is 



burnt by an almost tropical sun, and cut in twain 



by an east wind which seems to have been born 



and bred in the heart of an iceberg. 



Not so in autumn, or at any rate during the 

 VOL. II. c 



