70 
TRINGA CINCLUS. 
along 1 the shores of the ocean, with great rapidity, in a 
kind of waving serpentine flight, alternately throwing 
its dark and white plumage to the eye, it forms a very 
grand and interesting appearance. At such times the 
gunners make prodigious slaughter among them ; while, 
as the showers of their companions fall, the whole body 
often alight, or descend to the surface with them, till 
the sportsman is completely satiated with destruction. 
On some of these occasions, while crowds of these 
victims are fluttering along the sand, the small pigeon 
hawk, constrained by necessity, ventures to make a 
sweep among the dead in presence of the proprietor, 
but as suddenly pays for his temerity with his life ! 
Such a tyrant is man, when vested w r ith powder, and 
unrestrained by the dread of responsibility. 
The purre is eight inches in length, and fifteen inches 
in extent ; the bill is black, straight, or slightly bent 
dowirwards, about an inch and a half long, very thick 
at the base, and tapering to a slender blunt point at the 
extremity ; eye, very small ; iris, dark hazel ; cheeks, 
gray; line over the eye, belly, and vent, white; back 
and scapulars, of an ashy brown, marked here and there 
w r ith spots of black, bordered with bright ferruginous ; 
sides of the rump, white; tail-coverts, olive, centred 
w r ith black ; chin, white; neck below r , gray ; breast and 
sides, thinly marked with pale spots of dusky, in some, 
pure w hite ; w r ings, black, edged and tipt w ith white ; 
two middle tail-feathers, dusky, the rest brown ash, 
edged with white ; legs and feet, black ; toes bordered 
with a very narrow scalloped membrane. The usual 
broad band of white crossing the w ing, forms a dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of almost the whole genus. 
On examining more than a hundred of these birds, 
they varied considerably in the black and ferruginous 
spots on the back and scapulars ; some w r ere altogether 
plain, w r hile others were thickly marked, particularly 
on the scapulars, with a red rust colour, centred with 
black. The females w^ere uniformly more plain than 
the males ; but many of the latter, probably young 
birds, w r ere destitute of the ferruginous spots. On the 
