THE PEEWIT. 
179 
tunities of observing the dissimilarity in the mode of 
life, the manners, and plumage of the birds. I know 
not any bird that lays so large an egg, in proportion to 
its size, as the snipe. 
A few pairs of the peewit (tringa vanellus) visit an- 
nually some of our larger plowed fields to breed ; but 
they are so frequently disturbed by those necessary pro- 
cesses of husbandry, hoeing and weeding, that they 
seldom succeed in the object of their visit. On our 
adjoining heath they escape better, and bring off* many 
of their young: but the larger portion of them keep 
their station on the banks and dikes of the great drains 
and sewers in the marsh lands ; and the traveller, who 
happens, in the spring of the year, to pass along any of 
the roads bordering upon these haunts, where many 
pairs are settled, will long remember the wearying and 
incessant clamor of these birds, which, rising as he ap- 
proaches, wheel about him in an awkward, tumbling 
flight, accompanied by the unremitting, querulous cry 
of “peewit, peewit,” continued by the perseverance of 
successive pairs, as long as he remains near their habi- 
tation ; which generally being a flat, aguish, uninterest- 
ing country, where little is heard but the whispering of 
the wind in the reeds and sedges, the teasing monotony 
of this bird gives a very peculiarly dreary and melan- 
choly character to parts of our lowland roads. In some 
counties these cold, wet districts go by the name of 
“ peewit or pewety lands.” At this period of the year, 
the bird is bold and fearless, and menaces the intruder 
with all its vociferous powers, when he approaches its 
haunts,* but the broods being fledged, the families unite, 
form large flocks, and retire to open meadows, unin- 
closed commons and downs, feeding on slugs and worms, 
and become wild and vigilant creatures. It is well 
known that the glareous liquor or white of the egg of 
this bird, upon being boiled, becomes gelatinous and 
translucent, not a thick opake substance like that of the 
hen ; a circumstance that is likewise observable in the 
eggs of the rook, and of many of our small birds. The 
latter are not sufferers by it ; but the eggs of the poor 
rook, though bearing little resemblance to those of this 
