TRIP TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 145 



temperately ; and their sideling gait had the air of circumspection 

 and calculation. You smile, good Sir, at our childishness ; — 

 you are welcome. We laughed outright. Under the sea-wrack 

 were shoals of that little jumping shrimp^ with a large head, 

 which is found on nearly every coast. On lifting up a handful 

 of sea-wrack, they swarmed and leaped about like fleas — some 

 of them being scaixely bigger. These little fellows are the 

 best anatomists in the world : in a single night they will turn 

 a small animal into a more beautifully white, and clean, and 

 perfect skeleton, than can be obtained by any other means. 

 They are of all sizes, from half an inch long to no size at all. 



Our double-barrels had been laying idle in the hollow of our 

 arms for some hoiu's, when a flock of ring-dotterels and purres 

 started up before us, and, taking a circuit over the sea, settled 

 again, farther on, at the very edge of the rising tide: — here, they 

 boldly ran into the water for any floating food they might spy, 

 sometimes allowing each little swell to take them almost off" 

 their legs. We put them up again and again, and succeeded 

 in bringing down three of them ; but they always fell in the 

 sea, and were lost to us. At last, they altered their minds, and, 

 instead of going our way any farther, took a wider sweep over 

 the sea, and settled behind us. One bird, which it was our 

 particular object to obtain in this journey, we did not even get 

 a glimpse of, — the red-legged crow. We had been told by an 

 Ornithologist of great accuracy, that it breeds in several parts 

 of these cliffs every year ; but of this there seems to be great 

 doubt ; — its chief resort appears to be the Cornish coast. 



Near Black-Gang Chine I had the good fortune to meet 

 with an insect I never saw before or since. The soil was 

 a kind of loose sand, with a good many short blades of 

 withered grass sticking up out of it, the runners of which 

 crawled along the top, or just below the top, as the case 

 might be, and now and then shooting down a root to hold 

 fast by; looking altogether something as though an old tanned 

 fishing -net had been thrown over the soil to keep it from 

 blowing away, and had shot out and taken root at the knots, 

 just for its own amusement, or as a hold, in case the sea- 

 breezes should be too much for it. In this place, stopping 

 to pick up a feather, I saw something move in the sand, but 

 as soon as I could fix my eye on it, all was still, and I could 



* Tali/riis Lnciis/a. En. 

 NO. II. VOL. II. U 



