RING-DOTTERELS AND PURRES. 
49 
handful of sea-wrack, they swarmed and leaped about like 
fleas — some of them being scarcely bigger. These little 
fellows are the best anatomists in the world : in a single 
night they will turn a small animal into a more beautifully 
white, and clean, and perfect skeleton, than can be obtained 
by any other means. They are of all sizes, from half an 
inch long to no size at all. 
Our double-barrels had been lying idle in the hollow of 
our arms for some hours, when a flock of Ring-dotterels 
and PuRRES started up before us, and, taking a circuit 
over the sea, settled again, farther on, at the very edge of 
the rising tide : here they boldly ran into the water for any 
floating food they might spy, sometimes allowing each little 
swell to take them almost off their legs. We put them up 
again and again, and succeeded in bringing down three of 
them; but they always fell in the sea, and were lost to us. 
At last, they altered their minds, and, instead of going our 
way any farther, took a wider sweep over the sea, and 
settled behind us. One bird, which it was our particulai' 
object to obtain in this journey, we did not even get a 
glimpse of, — the red-legged crow. We had been told by 
an ornithologist of great accuracy, that it breeds in several 
parts of the clilfs every year ; but of this there seems 
to be great doubt ; — its chief resort appears to be the 
Cornish coast.* 
Near Black-Gang Chine I had the good fortune to meet 
with an insect I never saw before or since. The soil was 
a kind of loose sand, with a good many short blades of 
* Mr. Hutchinson has just informed me that a pair of the Cornish choughs 
still frequent the neighbourhood of Freshwater. They have frequently been 
shot at, and one, which he saw repeatedly, appeared to have had its leg broken. 
On the opposite coast of Hampshire these birds occur not unfreqnently. — E. N. 
E 
