HABITS OF THE AVOCET. 
143 
in former periods. When far more of the low-lying parts of England were fen 
and marsh than at the present time, and when the high grounds at the water¬ 
shed,” in the midland counties—which, being rich in mineral treasures, are now 
the seat of the most extensive metalliferous manufactures in the world, and the 
abode of a population, numerous, industrious, and devoted to the cultivation of 
every science and the improvement of every useful and ingenious art—lay in the 
state of a comparative wilderness, covered with rough copses and studded with 
mantling pools ; when such was the state of things, many marsh-birds, which are 
now of but rare occurrence and very local, appeared in many places and in great 
numbers. I do not mean to say with old Geraed, that Barnacles were actually 
seen in the act of turning into Solan Geese, in the sedgy pools of Staffordshire ; 
but there certainly were many marsh-birds generally distributed over the country 
at that period which are now but seldom met with. The Avocet is one of the 
number; and, on this account, this bird has an interest in the eyes of an English¬ 
man, in addition to that which it possesses in a merely ornithological point of 
view. It is a memorial of the past—a sort of antiquarian bird—one of those 
which 
‘‘ Make former times shake hands with latter,” 
and enable us, in some measure, to hold converse with our ancestors, as well as 
with our cotemporaries.' 
The Avocet, 
