C. AND II. CANDLEU’a NOTES I'KOM THE NETHERLANDS. 1 (59 
tlicy settled constantly on gates and rails, and once or twice we 
saw a bird perch on the telegraph wires alongside the road. At 
Cocksdorp we left the carriages and walked along the shore, and 
over a waste of sandhills, to the fine lighthouse, which marks the 
channel between Texel and Vlieland (or the Vlie), the next island 
to the north. Almost the only living object among the sandhills 
was the pretty orange-striped Natterjack l oad, which we saw in 
numbers. Once we passed near what, from the clamour that they 
made, we took to bo a large assembly of birds, but they were 
separated from us by an impassable breadth of mud and water, 
and in the mist and rain we could not use our glasses to distinguish 
their forms. 
Northern Texel has for long been known as “Eyerland,” from 
the quantity of birds breeding upon its marshes and sandhills; but 
owing to causes operating in all thickly-peopled and progressive 
countries, the number has much decreased in recent years, and the 
district now scarcely deserves the name it still bears. Texel, 
however, still furnishes a considerable supply of “plovers’ eggs” 
to the Amsterdam fishmarket; and no doubt the phrase is 
construed as liberally by the collectors of the island as it was by 
those of Norfolk in the old days.* 
Our second day in Texel was in all respects a contrast to the 
first. The sun shone brilliantly, and starting early we struck 
westward across the island, towards the sandhills of the North 
Sea coast, which were clearly outlined against the blue sky, like a 
mountain range in miniature. We passed over a level tract of 
firm pasture land, in places light and sandy, with the flora of a 
Suffolk heath. The fields were divided by turf walls, about which 
the Whoatear was breeding. We had once a good view of a 
Black-tailed Godwit, flying uneasily in circles over a wet meadow, 
and uttering its loud cry, from which the Dutch have given it the 
name of “ Griit-tb.” 
Under the shelter of the sandhills, on the landward side, is a 
small village called the Koog, and on the dunes above (seventy- 
nine feet above the sea) a beacon has been erected, which is known 
as “the Scherm of Koog.” It is a solid framework of timber, the 
top of which commands a wide prospect over land and sea, and it 
*See Lubbock’s ‘Fauna of Norfolk’ (Mr. Southwell’s edition), pp. 81 
and 90. 
