STRAGGLERS. 159 



rier; because the sea on the east is nowhere too wide for the 

 flight of even a moderately winged bird. But the west and 

 centre of Europe are not so well adapted to the regular 

 migration of these Grallaa, as the eastern parts of the conti- 

 nent, because the Carpathian and Bohemian mountains divide 

 them in the north, and the dry mountainous parts of France, 

 and the Alps in their continuation, divide them in the south. 

 Thus the directions of their migrations are changed more 

 into those of the basins of the great rivers ; and, though 

 in their summer migration they appear to be abundant in 

 Holland, and the other flat countries on the lower part of the 

 Rhine, there is little difference of climate to induce their 

 journeying in any great numbers from these places to the 

 corresponding portion of the British shores ; and as they 

 come more from the south-east in their progress northward, 

 and return more- to it in that southward, than if their polar 

 and equatorial pastures lay on the same meridian, there 

 are fewer stragglers that reach us, than we should be apt 

 to suppose, if we did not take these circumstances into con- 

 sideration. 



Before the country was so much improved by drainage and 

 culture, while the land around the coast was, to a great 

 extent, fenny waste, while the uplands were full of brakes 

 and pools, while, from the state of the surface, the extremes 

 of season were much greater, the snow lay heavier and longer 

 upon the whole of the uplands, and the fens were flooded 

 both by the autumnal rains and the spring rains, and melting 

 of the snows, those parts of the coast of England which lie 

 opposite the Netherlands were, of course, so much more in the 

 state of those countries which the Gralla3 under consideration 

 still frequent, that we may very naturally suppose them to 

 have been much more abundant then than they are now. 

 But the examination of the laws according to which their 

 numbers have diminished, till they have all become rare 



