BRITISH BIRDS, 
I2I 
preaching the fhore and the fea, and the curvature 
of their courfe is pointed out by the flock’s appear- 
ing fuddenly and alternately in a dark or in a 
fnowy white colour, as their backs or their bellies 
are turned to or fr6m the fpedtator. * 
The Purre leaves this country in the fpring, but 
whither it retires to breed is not yet known. It is 
faid to be widely difperfed over both Europe and 
America. 
By the kindnefs of his friends the author has been 
furniflied with many of thefe birds ; and on the 
mofl: minute infpe(Si:ion, as has before been noticed 
in refpedt of others of this genus, they all differed 
in a greater or lefs degree from each other, f 
* It is fomewhat remarkable that birds of different fpecies, 
fuch as the Ring-dottrel, Sanderling, &c. which affociate with 
the Purre, Dunlin, &c. fliould underftand the fignal, which, 
from their wheeling about altogether with fuch promptitude 
and good order, it would appear is given to the whole flock. 
f In a variety of this fpecies, obligingly prefented by Geo. 
Strickland, Efq. of Ripon, the bill was bent a little downward ; 
and the fore part of the neck and the breaft were of a pale red- 
difli buff colour : in other refpe(^s it did not differ materially. 
There is reafoii to fufpe61: that fome ornithologiils have de- 
nominated this bird the Dwarf Curlew ; and probably the 
Cincle, or L’Alouette de Mer, of Buffon, and the variety of 
the Purre, deferibed by Latham, only differ from the fpecimen 
whence the above drawing was taken, in age or fex. 
VoL. II. t 
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