226 Birds, 



many were my juvenile speculations as to the intention of nature in 

 endowing it with a beak so grotesque and unusual. 



Several years afterwards, while examining a fine British specimen, 

 I was struck by the peculiar formation of the tip of the bill, which ap- 

 peared to me to be so slender and exquisitely delicate as to render it 

 impossible for the bird to thrust it into the sand or mud in search of 

 insects or worms, after the manner of the Tringidae and Scolopacidae 

 (sandpipers, snipes, woodcocks, &c.) In the latter family (the Scolo- 

 pacidae) the tip of the bill is comparatively large, soft, and peculiarly 

 sensitive, and amply furnished with nerves, which render it a delicate 

 organ of touch, and, as Mr. Yarrell observes, proves of the greatest as- 

 sistance to these birds when boring in the soft sand or mud, by ena- 

 bling them to detect their food when placed beyond the reach of 

 sight. Now the reverse of this applies to the avocet ; the tip of the 

 bill, even in a recently killed specimen, is hard and rather brittle, re- 

 sembling in appearance a minute portion of very thin whalebone, and 

 scarcely so thick as the point of the finest crowquill pen. I could 

 not help fancying that Nature had therefore turned it upwards, as it 

 were, out of the reach of harm, and allotted to another portion of the 

 beak the duty of searching for and detecting the food of the bird. 



I felt strengthened in this opinion from observing that the depres- 

 sion and flattening of the bill throughout the greater part of its length, 

 produced, at the curve, a sharpness of the outer edges of the mandi- 

 bles, which appeared to me to be precisely of such a form as would 

 render the passing of that part of the bill underneath the sand, by 

 means of a horizontal motion from right to left, and lice versa, an 

 easy and natural operation. 



Never having seen this bird in a wild state, although I have passed 

 much time in pursuit of water-fowl on various parts of the sea-coast 

 of Great Britain and Ireland, I had no opportunity of verifying my 

 conjectures until lately, when A. T. Dodd, Esq., of Chichester, an ex- 

 cellent naturalist, to whose zeal and liberality the Museum in that 

 town is indebted for the acquisition of a valuable collection of British 

 birds, favored me with some facts connected with the occurrence of 

 the spoonbill and the avocet in that neighbourhood. Recent speci- 

 mens of both these birds had been brought to him by an intelligent 

 person of whose accuracy of observation he entertained no doubt, and 

 from whom he learned the following particulars relative to their man- 

 ner of feeding. 



" He had observed that the mode adopted by the spoonbill, was by 

 ploughing the soft sand or mud from side to side, with its bill, to the 



