116 ORALLY. 



are in the southern parts of the country ; and hence one may 

 easily suppose that they can " keep close " on the hill. The 

 name of the bird in the original language of the place where 

 it breeds, generally tells something more appropriate than 

 the usual scientific names. The Gaelic name for the dotterel 

 is An tdmadan mbintich ; which literally means " peat-bog 

 fool ;" but mbinticJi has a more extended meaning it sig- 

 nifies the "water-shed," or "summit-level," between the heads 

 of rivers which run in opposite directions, and where the 

 water stagnates, and the ground is in consequence mossy, 

 consisting of " tumps " or " hassocks " of turf, alternating with 

 pools of water and naked patches of black peat earth, where 

 sheep cannot pasture or even mountaineers pass without 

 caution and difficulty. 



That such are the breeding places of the dotterel, the name 

 would lead us to conclude ; and in those rare instances in 

 which the eggs have been seen, it has always been upon the 

 margin of places of that description. There is as little arti- 

 ficial preparation for them as for those of the plover ; they 

 are the same in number, arranged quatrefoil, point to point, 

 in the same way, and very like in their colour and marking, 

 only smaller in size. The eggs of the two species are very 

 nearly in proportion to the sizes of the birds. The plover is 

 about eleven inches long, and nearly two feet in the stretch 

 of the wings, and the dotterel about nine inches by nineteen. 

 If the bodies were of the same form, and the weight of the 

 plover eight ounces, the dotterel should weigh rather less 

 than four ounces and a half, but it weighs rather more than 

 five, so that it is relatively a much thicker and heavier bird 

 than the plover. It is a " dumpy " bird ; and one might 

 almost take a type from it, and say, " dotterel-shaped." 



THE RING-PLOVER (Chorodriui li'uith'ula). 

 This is by no means a rare species, though it keeps all the 



