A few pairs of the peewit (tringa vanellus) visit annually some of our larger plowed fields to breed; but they are so frequently disturbed by those necessary processes of husbandry, hoeing and weeding, that they seldom succeed in the object of their visit. On our adjoining heath they escape better, and bring off many of their young: but the larger portion of them keep their station on the banks and dikes of the great drains and sewers in the marsh lands; and the traveller, who happens, in the spring of the year, to pass along any of the roads bordering upon these haunts, where many pairs are settled, will long remember the wearying and incessant clamor of these birds, which, rising as he approaches, wheel about him in an awkward, tumbling flight, accompanied by the unremitting, querulous cry of “peewit, peewit,” continued by the perseverance of successive pairs, as long as he remains near their habitation; which generally being a flat, aguish, uninteresting country, where little is heard but the whispering of the wind in the reeds and sedges, the teasing monotony of this bird gives a very peculiarly dreary and melancholy character to parts of our lowland roads. In some counties these cold, wet districts go by the name of “peewit or pewety lands.” At this period of the year, the bird is bold and fearless, and menaces the intruder with all its vociferous powers, when he approaches its haunts; but the broods being fledged, the families unite, form large flocks, and retire to open meadows, uninclosed commons and downs, feeding on slugs and worms, and become wild and vigilant creatures. It is well known that the glareous liquor or white of the egg of this bird, upon being boiled, becomes gelatinous and translucent, not a thick opake substance like that of the hen; a circumstance that is likewise observable in the eggs of the rook, and of many of our small birds. The latter are not sufferers by it; but the eggs of the poor rook, though bearing little resemblance to those of this plover, are in some places not uncommonly taken and sold conjointly with them in the London market; and probably the habitual eater of them only can distinguish a sensible difference.