414 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



within the field of my telescope at the same time. There were 

 a few Terns here and there along the coast, and some large 

 Gulls, probably immature Great Black-backed Gulls, on a distant 

 sand. On some parts of the Lincolnshire coast this fine Gull 

 is distinguished by the local name of the " man-eater," for it 

 is said to be the only Gull which will attack a corpse floating, or 

 stranded. 



Donna Nook is one of the salient angles of the Lincolnshire 

 coast-line, and on that lovely day in May the view from the sand- 

 hills was almost unlimited to the south across a level fertile 

 country — league after league — till it melted into the blue haze of 

 the sleeping wold. To the north a desert — the lonesome shore, 

 with scarcely any sign of life upon it — a weary monotone of 

 shifting sand, with a grey-blue line of sea on the horizon. Yonder, 

 far out on the right, where we can just discern the flying manes 

 of the "white horses" hastening towards the land, is the great 

 sand called the Haile, the scene of countless disasters and some 

 notable wrecks, from that of the ship ' Betsy' on Jan. 3rd, 1767, 

 in which perished, when on a voyage from Leith to London, 

 Brigadier- General Hamilton, a " commander of his most faithful 

 Portuguese Majestie's armies," his wife and child, servants, and 

 all the crew, to the last of the Hull whalers, the old ' Diana,' lost 

 in a terrific north-east gale on October 18th, 1869, which covered 

 the coast with wrecks. 



Often enough, on the eastern slope of the sand, through 

 many a fearful night of storm, men in sore agony have clung in 

 the humming shrouds hour by hour, with eyes straining for any 

 sign of rescue towards the invisible shore, till, all hope abandoned, 

 they have dropped off one by one into the ravenous sea. 



Out there beyond the creek, where the white Terns flicker 

 above the summer sea, a small foreign vessel once came on shore. 

 At daybreak men went out to the rescue, and as the tide was 

 ebbing they had little difficulty in working their boat alongside. 

 The crew were clustered in the rigging, and the captain's wife — 

 a fair young Swede — highest of all, her hair, in the fiery dawn, 

 all loose, streamed out like a pennant in the course of the north- 

 east wind. The men, half-dead, were taken off, and then one of 

 the rescuers, going aloft, cut the lashings, and lowered the girl's 

 body, for she had been long dead under the cold and horror of 

 that cruel night of exposure. All this I heard long ago from the 



