124 GRALL^E. 



for running among stones on the shingly beaches than those 

 of the ring-plover, yet the two are, in the places where the 

 Kentish have been seen, very generally found mixed with 

 each other ; and that may be one of the reasons why, to 

 common observation, they have appeared to be the same 

 birds. 



Both species are handsome birds, though the Kentish is by 

 far the more elegant bird of the two. If it were met with 

 inland, its slender and graceful form, and the delicacy of its 

 plumage, would lead one to suppose it a fair-weather bird, a 

 bird that would seek shade and shelter rather than remain 

 exposed to the wind and rain on the naked beach. It is, of 

 course, a little more delicate than the ring-plover ; because, 

 as a British bird, it is local on the warmest shores in the 

 island that have beaches of shingle ; but probably, as is the 

 case with most birds (and indeed with animals of all kinds), 

 the nature of its food may determine its locality much more 

 than the weather. 



If the transition be gradual, the power which all animals 

 have of adapting their covering to the climate and the season 

 is very great. Many of the birds which are migratory, and 

 have their colours pale while in the polar locality, acquire a 

 plumage richer in the tints, but less abundant in quantity, 

 as they proceed southward ; but if they are from any cause 

 compelled to linger in the north, the feathers remain during 

 the winter, become pale in whole or at the margins, and are 

 thickened by the production of young feathers below. As 

 formerly hinted, that change is so conspicuous in the wheat- 

 ear, that the last males which are found in the extreme 

 north of England, are so very different in their dress from 

 the same birds as found in the summer, that, judging from 

 the plumage alone, any one would take them to be a different 

 species. 



The shores upon which, in this country, the Kentish plover 



