BIRD-LIFE BY RIVER AND STREAM. /I 



the rocks and the sodden mist-swept inland 

 plateaux, and retains its streamlet simplicity until 

 the spacious fiord is reached by which it enters 

 the open sea, and upon which in many cases 

 vessels of the largest tonnage can ride in absolute 

 security. 



Of all these lovely stream-rivers it is the famous 

 Dart that I am the most familiar with, a river, 

 apart from its bird-life or any ornithological 

 charm, that yields to no other English stream in 

 interest and romance ; for its blue and silver 

 waters and hanging shores are inseparably 

 associated with some of our greatest heroes of 

 the sea We need not stay to dilate upon such 

 topics in a book of the present character, but 

 memories of these bygone worthies and their 

 mighty deeds that must endure for all time will 

 crowd upon us as we take up the study of bird- 

 life upon its shores and waters. The great wary 

 Herons that unfold their ample wings and flap 

 lazily along the quiet reaches, and the Gulls that 

 penetrate from the open Channel up the wide 

 expanse of waterway, hovering and circling above 

 the blue waters, must have descended from 

 ancestral birds that haunted the river when 



