3IO CHAPMAN S BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



process is graphically described in chapter XIV, and will be quite 

 new to most of our readers. 



Space will not permit us to say more, much as we should like to 

 have done, of the Borderlands — for it is fair and of pleasant memory 

 — rich in historic interest beyond any part of Great Britain. It has 

 been our good fortune to see it under many phases — in sunshine and 

 storm, under the mystery of midnight, when the restful hills sleep 

 outlined in darkest shadow, and the breadth of heaven glows with 

 the pure soft light of a myriad stars. But Cheviot — and when we 

 say Cheviot we mean the whole range of hill country of which 

 Cheviot Peak and Carter Fell reign twin monarchs — has other 

 moods than those which woo the fancy of a summer tourist, when 

 in the latter autumn the grey curtains of the storm-cloud lower to 

 sweep each giant slope in drowning sheets of ice-cold rain, changing 

 the burns into roaring impassable torrents, or buried deep in polar 

 snows, choking the hollows and gaps between the hills to an immense 

 depth, or piled in hopeless drift against the low walls of the 

 shepherd's cot. 



In the second part of the book we are taken from the hill 

 districts and transported to the ' slakes,' ' tidal sand-flats,' and 

 ' sand-bars ' of the north-east coast, haunts of innumerable wild-fowl. 

 Thousands of acres of these ' slakes ' or mud-flats are covered with 

 a luxuriant growth of sea-grass (Zostera marina) ; here thousands of 

 geese feed by day and ducks by night. The bird population of the 

 sands, which are of immense extent, are chiefly Waders, either 

 residents for the season or such as are in transit ; Godwits, Curlew, 

 Whimbrel, Knot, Grey Plover, Turnstone, Sanderlings, Sea-pyots, 

 Redshanks, in innumerable numbers ; with a sprinkling of scarcer 

 visitors, as the Ruff, Greenshank, and Curlew Sandpiper. The great 

 chattering flights of Godwit are always wild, and cannot be 

 approached on foot ; these, and the Knot, mostly frequent the 

 mud-flats. Regarding the former, Mr. Chapman remarks : — ' The 

 Godwit is one of the most abundant of our winter wild-fowl, and 

 may always be found, thousands strong, in the roughest and hardest 

 winters, and most protracted frosts.' This is remarkable when we 

 consider that in districts further south it is recognised only as a bird 

 of double passage — spring and autumn. The thousands of young 

 birds, which, in August and September, for a few weeks, frequent the 

 fiat shores of the Humber and Lincolnshire coast, in due course 

 pass south ; and although in severe winters a few are sometimes 

 found scattered along our coast, these are probably wanderers from 

 some other locality arriving long after their fellows have passed 

 southward. 



Naturalist, 



