174 ORALLY. 



shelving shores in the winter, and the moist and marshy 

 moors in the breeding season, and often halting a little on 

 the ploughed fields in the course of their journeys. That 

 any of them come to Britain from the south, or leave it at 

 least to a farther distance than the northern and western 

 isles in the summer, is not very probable, but they have 

 both an inland and a northward, or rather a north-westward, 

 motion within it at that season. The moors of the southern 

 parts of England are too dry for them in the summer, and 

 the same may be said generally of the lower moors all along 

 the east side of the island. Their great breeding ground 

 commences about Westmoreland, and runs along the western 

 side of Scotland and the isles. 



They tend much to enliven the more dreary and desolate 

 of those marshy moors ; as during the breeding season they 

 whistle and scream, in wild and varied notes, till all the place 

 rings again; accompanying their cries by wheeling flights 

 which are not ungraceful. 



The nest is a very rude couch of withered grass or rushes ; 

 the eggs are four, of a pale brownish green with spots of 

 different shades of brown. They are placed quatrefoil, like 

 those of the plovers. The young run as soon as they break 

 the shell, but they are then covered with yellowish down, 

 and it is some time before they are fledged. Their principal 

 food at that season is earth-worms, and the young of fishes 

 and frogs; and though (as is the case with all birds that 

 nestle in the wilds) they nestle apart, they are often very 

 close to each other. One foggy evening I lost my way, or 

 rather the bearing, for there was no way to lose, in the 

 dreary district of Ross Mull ; and as I was trying for " the 

 blink of the sea" the greater part of the night without 

 success, though I found plenty of water, I had no lack of 

 the music of the curlews; and certainly it was, under the 

 circumstances, far from being disagreeable. In those places 



