STKAGGLERS. 155 



season, and in numbers so considerable, that they were en- 

 titled to a place among our feathered tribes, as subjects of 

 popular observation. The evidence which we have of those 

 remote times, is, however, far from being precise ; and as 

 more modern ornithologists have sometimes confounded 

 species of birds which are permanently resident, and thus 

 open to every-day observation, it cannot well be supposed 

 that the elder observers could be perfectly accurate in their 

 distinctions, or that we can implicitly trust to their tradi- 

 tionary statements, without some collateral proofs. 



It must, no doubt, be granted that, in earlier times, the 

 people generally were better acquainted with our native ani- 

 mals in the wild state, than they have been in times more 

 recent, or than the majority of them are even now. The 

 progress of improvement, the consequent diminution of the 

 numbers of the animals, more especially of those which, like 

 the birds in question, frequent only (or chiefly) wild and 

 uncultivated places, the more general collecting of the people 

 into towns, their more constant occupation in labour, espe- 

 cially in-door labour, and, perhaps also, the separation of 

 natural history from popular language by the introduction of 

 scientific names, have tended alike to banish many parts of 

 natural history equally from the study and the language of 

 the people. 



There is no doubt also that the physical changes in the 

 country itself, to which frequent allusion has been made in 

 the course of these volumes, has had more influence upon the 

 wandering Grallse, than upon most other of the feathered 

 tribes. It is their habit to range seasonally over large tracts 

 of country, in such a way as to be in those places where the 

 waters are, not so much in permanent lakes and streams, as 

 in seasonal inundations, or where those inundations have just 

 subsided and left upon the surface supplies of food for the 

 birds. 



