NOVEMBER 223 



generally laid on fallow or ploughed land, which the 

 ordinary operations of sowing, harrowing, and rolling 

 would destroy. The later eggs, laid among springing 

 corn and grass, are pretty safe from wholesale molesta- 

 tion. But where County Councils might usefully 

 interfere is to prevent the destruction of the birds 

 themselves. Each year an increasing number of lap- 

 wings are exposed for sale in second and third-rate 

 London poulterers' shops, no doubt to be palmed off on 

 the customers of certain restaurants as golden plover. 

 Though not absolutely unpalatable, they are very 

 inferior to that succulent little bird. It is unpardon- 

 able greed to devour both parents and eggs ; we don't 

 treat any other wild birds so voraciously ; why should 

 the lapwing be singled out for peculiar persecution? 

 It is shameful that, as may be witnessed any spring in 

 London, adult lapwings and their eggs should be 

 exposed for sale in the same shops at the same time ; 

 for of all fowls of the air, there is not one that works 

 so incessantly and exclusively in the farmer's service as 

 the pretty peewit. The diet of this bird is wholly of 

 worms, insects, and molluscs, and it is simply inde- 

 fatigable in clearing the land of these pests. The 

 Covenanters hated the peewit because its nervous rest- 

 lessness betrayed them when hiding in the moors 

 from Claverhouse's dragoons, and Sir Walter Scott 

 mentions that even in his day the shepherds used to 

 destroy their eggs. 



