THE ZooLocist—Dec EMBER, 1872, 3321 
turmoil of great cities. Hear it where or when we may, whether by 
day, or shrill and startling from the darkness, coming out of the 
silence and bleakness of night like the plaint of some wandering 
ghost, there always seems a fascination in the sound, which, more 
especially to us dwellers on the coast, will recall familiar scenes 
and places.* Watch them, too, as they go slowly beating to wind- 
ward against the rising squall, with a background of leaden storm- 
cloud, when the curtains of the rain are lowering,—sweeping 
majestically like the trail of some dark garment along the horizon,— 
are they birds or only fragments of gtay paper blown fitfully about 
with the blast ?—flickering as they catch the light on their plumage, 
now above, now below, and looking as Tennyson has so well 
depicted— 
“ Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall.” 
Turnstone and Sanderling.—In the second week in August 
there were great numbers of both these species at Spurn, mainly 
birds of the year. 
Linnet.—Are now by thousands on the marsh stubble-fields, 
feeding on the seeds of the charlock, knotgrass, &c. 
Snipe.—September 10th. The first flight arrived about this 
date. 
Chimney Swallow.—September 17th. I see the swallows are 
congregating for their journey home; there are hundreds every 
morning perched on the telegraph-wires near my house. They 
left us in the last week in the month, after the 25th. On Wednesday, 
the 25th, there was a terribly cold drifting rain from the N.W. and 
a high wind accompanying it. On this day hundreds of swallows, 
particularly the young of the year, perished miserably, At my 
marsh farm scores sought refuge from the cold in the buildings, 
My man picked up a dozen together in the barn, all dead, and 
others about the stables and sheds; many, too, were so benumbed 
as to be unable to fly: he took several into the house and put them 
down before the fire; very few, however, came round—they died 
* Sir John Sinclair, in his ‘ Statistical Account of Scotland,’ narrates the following 
anecdote:—A Scottish gentleman, who visited England for the first time, and 
ardently desired to return home to his native hills and moors, was asked by 
his English host to come out into the garden at night to hear the song of the 
nightingale, a bird unknown in Scotland. His mind was full of home, and he 
exclaimed, “Na, na! I wadna gie the wheeple of a whaup for a’ the nightingales 
that ever sang.”—J. C. 
