192 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



the punt-shooter with his swivel gun, who bags 

 his two or three score at a shot, and maims and 

 wounds even more than he bags, destroys but a 

 tithe of the members of the feathered creation, 

 compared with him who plies his trade during the 

 breeding season in the woods or the swamps, the 

 heather or the glen, the sea-girt precipices or the 

 rocky islands where so many species love to rear 

 their young, whose existence is too often prema- 

 turely nipped in the bud where the eggs are 

 sought after as food or for the purposes of traffic 

 by the neighbouring inhabitants. 



As a direct and favourite article of luxury for 

 the table, perhaps that of the peewit or lapwing 

 (vanellus cristatus) is the best known in the 

 British islands. The moors of Scotland and 

 Yorkshire, the bogs of Ireland, the sandy rabbit- 

 warrens of Norfolk, the fens of Lincolnshire and 

 Cambridgeshire, and most of the maritime swamps 

 of the kingdom abound with these birds in the 

 months of April and May, and indeed there is 

 scarcely an extensive common in any part of 

 England, which has hitherto escaped the draining 

 improvements of modern agriculture, where they 

 may not be found during the breeding season, and 

 where a spring harvest of plovers' eggs is not 

 annually reaped. The grand emporium is of 

 course the Metropolis itself, and the trade is 



