A Delicacy. 261 
Spenser introduces this bird as denoting loneliness and 
•desolation:— 
“ Where my high steeples whilom used to stand, 
On which the lordly falcon wont to towre. 
There now is hut a heap of lyme and sand 
For the scriclie-owle to build her baleful bowre : 
And where the nightingale wont forth to powre 
Her restless plaints to comfort wakeful lovers, 
There now haunt yelling mewes and whining plovers.” 
(The Uuines of Time , 1. 127.) 
Harrison mentions “ plovers of both sorts, lapwings and 
pewets ; ” but Skelton classes these last two varieties to¬ 
gether “ with puwytt the lapwing.” Sir Thomas Browne 
distinguishes between the plover and the lapwing or 
vanellus; the former, he says, are plentiful in Norfolk, 
both the green and grey varieties, but “ they do not breed 
in that county but in some parts of Scotland and plen¬ 
tifully in Iceland.” Mr. Stevenson (Birds of Norfolk, 
vol. ii. p. 70) considers that by Iceland Ireland is here 
intended, but gives no reason for this supposition. 
The ringed plover, mentioned by Sir Thomas Browne 
under the name of ringlestone, was “ common about 
Yarmouth sands, laying its eggs, about June, in the sand 
and shingle ” (vol. iv. p. 319). The name Sea-dotterel was 
also applied to this plover, and occurs in two instances in 
the Hunstanton Accounts . The white plover which is 
also mentioned in these Accounts was probably the grey 
plover in its winter plumage. 
The proverb quoted by Muffett, in his Healths 
Improvement, as applied to a discontented person, “ A gray 
plover cannot please him,” shows that this bird was held 
in high estimation as an article of food. 
" There is also,” writes Sir Thomas Browne, “ a handsome, tall 
Bird, remarkable eyed, and with a bill not above two inches long, 
■commonly called a stone curlew, breeds about Thetford, about the 
.stone and shingle of the rivers f 
