DARTMOOR. XXI 



perceive at once that it presents no suitable abode for many of the 

 birds which were supposed to frequent it: the Great Bustard, for 

 instance, which has only occurred as a rare straggler on its 

 confines, would find no ground to meet its requirements ; the 

 Common Buzzard and, perhaps, the Hen-Harrier, and occasionally 

 Montagues Harrier, are the largest of the Raptores Avhich may 

 still nest upon the plateau of the forest, with the Snipe, Curlew, 

 and Common Sandpiper, the Ring-Ouzel, the Wild Duck, and 

 perhaps the Teal. Cranmere Pool, situated in a dreary swamp, 

 where the walking, or rather leaping, from one high tussock to 

 another is sufficiently fatiguing on a hot summer's day, has also 

 by its name provided a trap for the unsuspecting ornithologist, 

 who rashly conjectures that it may have once been the haunt of 

 the Crane, Grus communis. But, in the first place, the Common 

 Heron in the West Country is called the Crane, and the pool 

 might well be supposed to take its appellation from the common 

 and local bird ; and, in the second place, we are assured that the 

 pool in reality has no connection whatever with birds — " Cran " or 

 ^' Cron '' being the British for a stream, and " mere " or '' mor " 

 being British for a source of waters *. As a fact, hardly a bird is 

 ever to be seen in the neighbourhood of Cranmere Pool. We well 

 remember one hot day in early autumn, when in company with a 

 keeper, a moor-man, and three noble Gordon setters, we started 

 off in search of a brood of Blackgarae reported as frequenting a 

 hillside near the pool. We had some difficulty in discovering our 

 point, as even the most experienced moor-men are sometimes at a 

 loss to find Cranmere, and as we approached its dreary morasses 

 bii'ds became scarcer; by the bog which represented the pool, 

 long since drained, there was a solitary Heron, and some young 

 Ring-Ouzels were the only other birds we saw. 



Dartmoor is the home of mists, Avhich, even in the summer-time, 

 will suddenly pour their white fleecy waves over the rounded 

 hill-tops, blotting out all the landscape, and in late autumn and 

 winter are of such constant occurrence that it is not Avise to 

 wander on the moor without a compass, or one might be easily 

 lost and compelled to spend a night among the bogs. It was our 

 lot to be enveloped in a thick fog one November afternoon when 



♦ Vide Introduction to Carrington's ' Dartmoor.' 



