128 GRALL^E. 



the number of the birds which must breed in our hills, and 

 the comparative rarity of the eggs of the ring-plover (to say 

 nothing of those of the Kentish plover), should make us 

 pause ere we describe as migrant any bird which is simply 

 lost to common observation for a few months about the time 

 of breeding. Want of attention to the facts, and the decep- 

 tion of a loose analogy of the habits and migrations of inland 

 jbirds, have ted to many mistakes in the history of our shore 

 birds. The ring-plover is, for instance, described as a bird 

 migrating from the British shores to breed, in the edition 

 of "Bewick's Birds" dated 1832; whereas everybody, save 

 the common compilers of books, who most ingeniously con- 

 trive to know less, or less accurately, than anybody else, 

 knows that, if the shores are adapted to its habits, it breeds 

 on all parts of the coast, from Kent to Shetland. 



The sea as a pasture is perennial ; and therefore the birds 

 have no occasion to quit its shores unless when these are 

 covered with ice ; and thus, the migrations of sea birds, 

 although they no doubt depend upon the same general laws 

 as those of land birds, depend upon those laws as modified 

 by an element, the temperature, the productiveness, and the 

 accessibility of which, are all, without the polar zones in 

 which it freezes, much more uniform than those of the land. 

 The purer white on the under part of the shore birds also 

 enables them to bear with more indifference the changes of 

 temperature ; and all of them, the sanderling among the rest, 

 in all states of their plumage, have the part which, in their 

 ordinary attitudes, is exposed to the action of the ground (or 

 the water) under them, white. 



There is another source of error in estimating the numbers 

 of those birds which inhabit only the shores, and do not 

 range into the interior of the country even in the breeding 

 season, against which it is necessary to guard. Those birds 

 are seen in line, drawn out, as it were, along the shores, and 



