CHAPTER XVI 



A NATIVE NATURALIST 



The towans or sandhills Their destructive progress over the land 

 Sea rush introduced The ferry at Lelant Among the towans 

 The meadow -pipit The ferryman Knowledge of wild life 

 in country boys and men Countryman and chaffinch The 

 native naturalist A strange story of a badger Great black- 

 backed gull and young guillemot Sparrow-hawk and curlew 

 Fight between a seal and a conger Story of a young seal An 

 osprey A great northern diver The killing passion in sportsmen 

 Story of a meadow-pipit The seal colony threatened. 



THE Towans, as the sandhills or dunes on the 

 north-east side of St. Ives Bay are called that 

 barren place mentioned in the last chapter 

 where a horde of fugitive thrushes found snails 

 enough to save them from starving is a curiously 

 attractive bit of country. It is plainly visible from 

 St. Ives, looking east over the water a stretch of 

 yellow sands where the Hayle River empties itself in 

 the Bay, and, behind it, a grey-green desert of hum- 

 mocky or hilly earth, where the hills are like huge 



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