CRUELTY OF RURAL AMUSEMENTS. 155 
hollow of the rugged chalk hills, containing six pale 
blue eggs. With us the wheatear stays only to hatch 
her brood. When this is effected, and -the young suffi- 
ciently matured, it leaves us entirely, and by the middle 
of September not a bird is found on their summer sta- 
tions. They probably retire to the uplands on the sea- 
coasts, as we hear of them as late as November in these 
places, where it is supposed they find some peculiar in- 
sect food, required by them in an adult state, and not 
found, or only sparingly, in their breeding stations, in 
which the appropriate food of their young is probably 
more abundant. Thus united on the coasts, they can 
take their flight, when the wind or other circumstances 
favor their passage, all of them departing upon the ap- 
proach of winter. 
Partial as I am to the habits and all the concerns of 
the country, I regret to say that rural amusements, con- 
nected as they commonly are with the creatures about 
us, are frequently cruel ; and that we often most incon- 
siderately, in our sports, are the cause of misery and 
| suffering to such as nestle around our dwellings, or fre- 
| quent our fields, which, from some particular cause or 
| motive, become the object of pursuit. I say nothing 
. of the birds known as game, as perhaps we cannot ob- 
i tain them by less painful means than we are accustomed 
to inflict, and the pursuit is frequently conducive to re- 
| creation and health; but the sportsman’s essaying his 
skill on the swallow race, that “ skim the dimpled pool,” 
or harmless glide along the flowery mead, when, if suc- 
I cessful, he consigns whole nests of infant broods to 
famine and to death, is pitiable indeed ! No injury, no 
meditated crime, was ever imputed to these birds ; they 
free our dwellings from multitudes of insects ; their 
: unsuspicious confidence and familiarity with men merit 
| protection not punishment from him. The sufferings 
I of their broods, when the parents are destroyed, should 
excite humanity, and demand our forbearance. But the 
wheatear, in an unfortunate hour, has been called the 
i English ortolan, and is pursued as a delicate morsel 
|| through all its inland haunts, when hatching and feeding 
j its young, the only period in which it frequents our 
