The Sand Martin. 
1884.] 
397 
herself. On arriving at the cottage she found the mother 
seated at the door, and before the lady could speak said “ I 
know what you have come for.” She then detailed the cir- 
cumstances of her daughter’s death, and the covering the 
face with the lady’s handkerchief. So also the incident 
mentioned by Col. Meadows Tayler in the story of my life 
that of the Dead Soldier and its Incidents. 
III. THE SAND MARTIN, AND ITS MIGRATIONS. 
By Rev. Samuel Barber. 
« BOUT five miles south of Liverpool the suburb of 
Grassendale skirts the Mersey, where the river is 
about 2 miles wide. There is a sea-wall, or rather 
a wall-fronted esplanade, drained by passages underneath 
the parapet, and these open out upon the wall by apertures 
measuring about 10 inches by 6. Within these drains, and 
actually under the feet of the promenaders, a colony of sand 
martins have, for many years, found their summer home. 
At high water these birds may be seen skimming over the 
surface of the river, and beating along the coast, in search 
of inserts, in a very methodical manner. Their chief 
hunting-field appears to be in front of the wall, which con- 
tains their eggs or young. No amount of wind — and there 
is plenty of it in this part of the world — seems to deter them 
from the chase. A casual observer might wonder where the 
inserts came from to support such continual hawking, for 
the most ingenious devices would scarcely enable him to 
secure six flies in as many hours, if indeed he could find any 
at all that the breeze had not carried away. 
Nature, however, abhors stereotyped methods in the regu- 
lation of animal economy, and exhibits in the varied condi- 
tions of bird-life, and in the adjustment of the appliances by 
which it is sustained, an elasticity and fertility of resource 
no less admirable than the variety of her forms. This is 
particularly true in the manner by which the supply of food 
for each species is furnished, and the balance of animal life 
maintained. 
The sand martin, more than the swallow, observes regu- 
larity in the time of its appearance in this country. In fa£t 
