THE SASTD-PIPER. 177 



wailing sound of their cries, their appearance and disappear- 

 ance, and the desire of procuring them for the table, all con- 

 spire to give them an interest. 



From the structure of their bills, the nature of their food, 

 and the places where that food is found, they may be said to 

 be, in a peculiar degree, birds of temperate climates ; and 

 so, when the climate of any one country ceases to be suitable 

 for them, they shift to other countries. Unless in the case 

 of those which chiefly inhabit the shores of the sea, locali- 

 ties which have in most latitudes a more uniform temperature 

 than the inland places, and which are in consequence more 

 fertile all the year round, they are equally obliged to remove 

 when influenced by excessive drought or excessive cold. 

 The impenetrable earth is equally barren to them whether 

 its barrenness arise from its being parched or being frozen. 

 The north, with its extensive marshes (and where it is 

 not rock or cultivated ground, it is very generally marsh, 

 even in the apertures between the mountains), is their grand 

 summer pasture. And it is a rich one. Aquatic larvae, and 

 other small aquatic animals, and animals that love the 

 humid earth more than the vegetation with which the earth 

 is covered, are especially abundant in those parts, so much so 

 that one can hardly walk in the neighbourhood of a swamp 

 in a northern forest (and there are few of these without in- 

 tervening swamps) without being tormented with buzzing, 

 stinging, and biting ; and then if one gets under a tree to 

 escape from those that are reeling about in the sun, down 

 they come like a shower, as if the whole country were one 

 insect nest. Any one who has tried a Canadian swamp, or 

 even a swamp in the northern parts of Europe, can tell some- 

 thing of the " plague of flies." Lepidopterous insects, but- 

 terflies, and moths, with their bright wings playing in the 

 sun, or their soft ones in the shade, and showing beauty but 

 not giving annoyance, are few. They are creatures of the 



VOL. II. N 



