Birds. 3073 



Notes on the Turnstone and Tern. 

 By the Rev. James Smith. 



In a country like our own, where the population is so numerous, 

 where cultivation has made such rapid and extensive progress, and 

 where everything is, more or less, of a conventional and an artificial 

 character, there is not the same opportunity nor the same facility for 

 watching and describing the habits of animals, as there is in those 

 regions where the landscape exhibits in every probability almost the 

 identical features which it did when it was finally traced out by the 

 hand of the Creator ; where the forest rears itself in primeval magnifi- 

 cence J where the vegetation is rank and luxuriant ; where the marsh 

 with its aquatic herbage extends for miles upon end ; where the sandy 

 desert is not without its peculiar tenants; where the prairie stretches 

 its wide expanse of sea-like undulations ; where the wave breaks on 

 rocks and shingles which have been seldom pressed by the human 

 foot; and where man has either not made his appearance at all, or has 

 yet to contend with the inferior animals for the sovereignty of the 

 scenes around him. On this account it would scarcely be reasonable 

 to expect that a work on natural history should make its appearance 

 among ourselves of the same racy freshness, and with the same accu- 

 mulation of interesting facts, as delight us in the writings of such men 

 as Wilson, Audubon, and we will add Azara, Levaillant and Water- 

 ton ; and as lead us on so willingly, and sometimes so unconsciously, 

 from page to page and from subject to subject. But, although in this 

 respect much cannot now be perhaps effected in our own country, it 

 is nevertheless conceived that, by those who have the leisure, the in- 

 clination, and above all the necessary enthusiasm and talent, more 

 might yet be done even in it than has been hitherto accomplished. 

 It is a reproach which frequently, and as it should seem not altogether 

 ' without reason, has been cast upon British writers on natural history, 

 that properly speaking, they ought, in a majority of cases, to be 

 looked upon as compilers much more than as independent and original 

 observers. When we narrowly examine the publications which have 

 appeared in Britain during the course of the last hundred years, on 

 the various branches of natural history, we shall be indeed surprised 

 to see that, numerous as they are, there is but little in most of them 

 that can be accounted as new and additional; and that to a great ex- 

 tent, each successive writer has borrowed from those by whom he has 

 been preceded, merely communicating to facts, or supposed facts, 

 ix. ° 



