OCT, A FINE OCTOBER MORNING. 17 



CHAPTER XXII. 



OCTOBER.— PART II. 



A SEA-SIDE WALK IN OCTOBER. 



Beauty of a fine October morning — Departure and arrival of 

 Birds — A walk along the Coast — The Goosander — Golden 

 Eye and Morillon — Plovers — Widgeon ; habits of in Feed- 

 ing ; occasionally breed in Scotland — Sands of the Bay — 

 Flounders — Herons — Curlews, Peewits, &c. — Oyster-birds 



— Mussel Scarps — Sea View — Longtails — Mallards — 

 Velvet Ducks ; mode of Feeding — Rabbits and Foxes — For- 

 mation of the Sand Hills ; remains of Antiquity found in them 



— Seals — Salmon-fishers — Old Man catching Flounders — 

 Swans — Unauthorized Fox-chace — Black Game — Roe. 



Charming to every sense is the first return of 

 Spring : but quite as enjoyable is a fine dry Au- 

 tumn day, and far more invigorating is the first 

 frosty morning than the breath of the most balmy 

 spring breeze that ever gave life to bird or butterfly. 

 In this part of the island, too. Spring is at best but 

 a capricious and uncertain beauty, and in the course 

 of four-and-twenty hours one is burnt by an almost 

 tropical sun, and cut in twain by an east wind which 

 seems to have been born and bred in the heart of an 

 iceberg. 



Not so in Autumn, or at any rate during the 



