128 FALCONIOffi. 



THE MARSH-HARRIER or Moor-Buzzard, as its names 

 import, is generally found on low, marshy lands, or unculti- 

 vated moors ; and in England was not so many years since 

 very numerous in the fens of Cambridgeshire and the 

 adjoining counties. Its flight is slow, smooth, and generally 

 near the ground. Though from the regular manner in which 

 birds of this genus traverse the surface, looking for prey, 

 like a dog hunting for game, it has been thought that they 

 have acquired the name of Harriers ; it seems almost certain 

 that this has been rather conferred from their marauding 

 disposition, since the plundering propensities of the con- 

 spicuously-coloured males of the species next to be described, 

 must have made them in old times a well-known terror 

 to the poultry-wives of the districts bordering on their 

 haunts.* 



The history of the Harriers as British Birds could not be 

 correctly told without referring to the changes effected by 

 the systematic drainage of the extensive fens of the eastern 

 parts of England from Lincolnshire southward. The result 

 of this process, begun centuries ago but only completed in 

 our own day, has been to bring under the plough many 

 thousands of acres which were formerly overgrown with 

 sedge and sallow-bushes, but now produce an abundance of 

 corn and green-crops. From the districts so reclaimed by 

 the civil engineer, for the good of the agriculturist and 

 through him of the nation at large, the Harriers with many 

 other kinds of birds have been almost entirely banished, 

 and though the naturalist may pardonably lament the con- 

 sequent diminution and loss of so many interesting members 

 of the fauna and flora of England, he cannot but recognize 

 it to have been fairly incurred in obedience to the law which 

 bids man replenish the earth and subdue it. Here it is 

 impossible to enter into details, but the curious may find 

 in an account of the Isle of Ely, written shortly after the . 



* It is worthy of remark that the present species was called by the older Eng- 

 lish writers, as even of late years by the fenmen, Moor-Buzzard only, and the 

 term Marsh-Hai'rier, now generally given to it by ornithologists, is certainly a 

 book-name of comparatively modern application. 



