196 ORALLY. 



lation of birds with the season is not greater in the one case 

 than in the other, though from the one class being seen in' 

 line, and the other in column, as already mentioned, the 

 accumulation on the shore may appear greater in proportion 

 than that on land. 



These autumnal scatterings of young life and its germs 

 do not partake of the characters of wasting and destruction, 

 though in the course of them much is destroyed. The seeds 

 and germs, both in the sea and on land, are many hundred- 

 fold what is required for the continuation of the races, so 

 that the proportion that can be spared for the birds is far 

 greater than the produce over and above the seed of the 

 most productive vegetable that man cultivates. Autumn is, 

 in fact, the grand seed-time of nature, both in the sea and 

 on the land ; and those gales which lash the one into foam 

 and fury, and sweep the other till it is bleak and leafless, are 

 the messengers of nature, upon whose wings the germs of 

 life are borne to all places where they have the chance of 

 coming to maturity. The littoral birds, even those species 

 of them that are not seen in the very heat of summer, appear 

 so immediately after these autumnal gales, that it would 

 require more knowledge than the mere fact of their being 

 seen or even found breeding in countries farther to the north, 

 to bear out the conclusion that they must all come from 

 thence. But the subject is one which requires the most 

 comprehensive and at the same time the most careful and 

 minute investigation. 



THE KNOT THING A (Tringa Canutus). 



The common name of this bird is said to be a corruption 

 of that of Canute, who, as the tradition runs, was partial to 

 it as food, though whether he feasted on it the same day that 

 he erected his throne within flood-mark in order to reprove 

 the adulation of his courtiers by a somewhat ostentatious 



