And all the time in spring you can hear the wild musical note of the curlew, and see the dun-coloured birds flitting against the green of the woods. They are shy and wary, and common along the shores on the sands which are exposed at low water. Ringed plovers can sometimes be seen running on the wet surface of the sands at the tide's edge, flocks of lapwings too. Teal is by no means infrequent up the rivers, and an occasional shag (cormorant) may be noticed swimming far up towards Saltash and fishing. In its spring dress, with its horn-like crest, and miserable-looking yellow face, and its lustrous dark-green plumage, the shag is a handsome bird. Mallard is fairly plentiful in the rivers, and you may see flocks sleeping away the day-hours on the flats, and recognize them by the longitudinally marked plumage of the drakes. Sometimes they fly back and forth as gulls do while they wait for the tide to ebb. Small birds there are, of course, in numbers, such as wag-tails, sandpipers, and the oddly crying and flying redshank, a shore bird. It wheels above the tide-line, or rests, bowing quaintly, on some grassy hummock near a pool. But these things can only be studied in leisured intimacy from a slow-going boat passing in the spring-time, when the blackthorn frosts the hedges and starry-eyed primroses grow to monstrous size. The train which flashes us across the bridge reveals none of them! In the first glimpse of our first Cornish "town" we catch sight of a steep winding street, which serves as full introduction, for in many a Cornish town shall we see the same again! And then, even as the train runs in the cuttings of Cornish soil, we realize almost at once the key-note of Cornwall--the extraordinary richness of growth. Ivy bursts over every wall in a perfect cataract; ferns and small wild things fill every crevice with their grasping roots, and even in winter there is no thinness or barrenness to be felt for evergreens flourish amazingly. The wooded reaches of the hills dispel the idea that Cornwall is everywhere a treeless land, and the constant dampness of its climate is shown by the lichen which clings to every branch and twig like hoar-frost, so that in winter the whole mass has a curious shot-green-and-brown effect. [Illustration: OLD BRIDGE AT LOSTWITHIEL] The West Cornwall Railway, reaching as far as Truro, was opened in 1852, and the Cornwall Railway in 1859. Both of these were afterwards absorbed by the Great Western Railway. One of the most beautiful parts of the whole line is that between Liskeard and Bodmin Road. The woods run riot on the ever varying slopes, and the evergreens are so fine, with their abundance of clean, glossy leaves, that even the ordinary country roads have something of the appearance of a carefully tended private drive.