2 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



hours over the moors without so much as a sight or sound of a 

 human being, hearing only the swish of the wind in the heather, 

 the cheep of the Meadow Pipit, the angry cry of the Lapwing as 

 we approach too near to her eggs or brood, the distant complaint 

 of the Curlew, or the sad sweet whistle of the Golden Plover, 

 when suddenly a sharp sound startles us. Is it some geologist 

 chipping off a specimen of millstone grit ? But what can he 

 want so far on the open moor ? Again we hear the clear " tac 

 tac tac." We look around, and, behold, not far off is a bird, not 

 " black as jet," like the Blackbird, but sooty-black, relieved only 

 by the white crescent on his breast. " Tac tac tac " we hear 

 again, and with each syllable up goes his tail. His cry alarms 

 the Grouse-cock, who flies off, and from a distance calls warn- 

 ingly " Go back, go back." I first made his acquaintance near 

 Loch Skeen, in Dumfriesshire. There I came suddenly upon a 

 party of six, no doubt a family party. But it is here in Derby- 

 shire that I have become familiar with him, either on the open 

 moor, or down a gully cut by a peaty brook, or under those 

 grand " edges " of gritstone clear-cut and precipitous against the 

 blue sky which to the uninitiated suggest cliffs bounding an 

 inland sea. But it is not only in the land of heather that the 

 Ring-Ouzel is to be found. Soon after I came to live in Derby- 

 shire, to my surprise I met him in the wilder parts of our dales, 

 and there found his nest concealed in some corner of the lime- 

 stone crags. Nor is it really surprising that he loves to haunt 

 these dales. They are not wide fertile valleys, nor are they 

 glens with sloping sides, dividing mountain from mountain. 

 They are rather rifts cut right through the middle of a flat- 

 topped hill. On a bleak April day the traveller may wander 

 over the dreary uplands, disheartened by the everlasting greyness 

 around him — grey sky above, grey stone walls, grey grass — with 

 no colour; not even a hedge or ploughed field to relieve the 

 monotony with their deeper browns. Quite suddenly the scene 

 changes. He is standing at the edge of a dale, looking down 

 upon the deep green of spruce-firs, and below them is a little river 

 clear as crystal, bright with the most vivid emerald-green of the 

 water-weeds over which it runs. Is it fancy ? Is it fairy-land ? He 

 clambers down to the water. Here he is sheltered from the biting 

 wind. He finds woods carpeted with dog's-mercury (Mercurialis 



