The Sun.
London, England, 1846-11-07 00:00:00

MAGAZINES-(CONTINVED).
MURRAY'S HOME and COLONIAL LIBRARY.
Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands.—
Part I.

After wearily wandering through the dull and
dreary waste of words which, at the present day,
meets one everywhere, walled up into the form of
books, it is quite refreshing to get among Mr. St.
John's lakes, rivers, valleys, and mountains, which
come as fresh from his pen as if seen after a shower of
rain by the early light of a summer's day. Many of
the localities described by him are familiar to us, and
the best praise we can give him is, that his descrip-
tions do justice to the grand realities. Loch Ness,
whose banks are known to us, and over whose deeps
we have sailed, is truly and beautifully described as
follows, while we quite enter into the author's dis-
may at being brought back from the land of dreams
to this dull earth, by the most unpoetical fact in it,
i. e., a steamboat laden with Cockneys :—" I well re-
member being one bright summer's day on the shore
of Loch Ness, and enjoying the surpassing loveliness
of the scene. The perfectly calm loch was like a
mirror, reflecting the steep red crags of the opposite
shore; and the weeping birch trees feathering down
to the very edge of the water, and hanging over its
surface, as if to gaze at their own fair forms in its
glassy depths, were as distinctly seen in the lake as
on the shore ; while here and there a trout rising at a
fly dimpled the smooth water, and in my idle mood
I watched the circles as they gradually widened and
disappeared. The white gulls floated noiselessly by, as
if afraid to disturb the stillness of the scene, instead
of saluting their common enemy with loud cries. I
had been for some time stretched on the ground en-
joying the quiet beauty of the picture, till I had at last
fallen into a half-sleeping, half-waking kind of dreami-
ness, when I was suddenly aroused by a Glasgow
steamer passing within a hundred yards of me, full of
holiday people, with fiddles and parasols conspicuous
on the deck, while a stream of black sooty smoke
showered its favours over me, and filled my mouth as
I opened it to vent my ill-temper in an anathema
against-boats, country-dance tunes, and cockneys."
We suspect Mr. St. John to be rather a recluse, and
not fond of having his meditations interrupted as he
has just related, we cannot otherwise account for his
great love and admiration of the sand hills of Forres,
which are certainly not likely to be infested by tour-
ists in search of the sublime and beautiful. We do
not know any one in whose company we would sooner
sally forth to spend a day with Nature, even amidst
the "sand hills,' for he evidently feels " sweet Na-
ture's every sense," and his eyes and heart are open
to many beauties and useful lessons, which most men
pass unheeded by. "Few people," he says, " are
aware of the numberless subjects of interest and ob-
servation to be found in the habits and structure of
the commonest birds and animals, which pass before
our eyes every day of our lives. How perfectly are
all these adapted to their respective modes of living
and feeding. In every garden and shrubbery the
naturalist finds amusement in watching its living
tenants. Look at the chaffinch, how it adapts the
colour and even the shape of its nest to the spot in
which it is placed, covering the outside with materials
of the same colour as the bark of the tree in which it
is. So do also all the other small birds again; they
line their nests with materials of the same colour as
their eggs. Tne prevailing colour of the hedge-spar-
row's nest is green, and here ggs are of a greenish
blue; and in the same way all our common and unre-
garded birds adapt both the outside and lining of their
eggs respectively.
nests to the colour of the surrounding. In the same
substances, and
that of their own
manner they all have bills adapted to the food on
which they live. The grain-feeding birds having
short, strong mandibles, while those of the insective-
rous birds are longer and more slender, and as per-
fectly adapted for searching in crannies and corners
for the insects and eggs that may be hidden there as
the former are for cutting and shelling the seeds and
grains on which they feed, &c." We were carried
irresistibly along by the exciting descriptions given
by Mr. St. John in his pursuit of the red deer, and
were almost as breathless while reading it as he must
have been when seeing the deer within a pace or two
of a sure shot; we only awoke to our usual feeling
when we fancied we saw the monarch of our forests
driven to bay, attacked on all sides by enemies, and
resolving to fight to the last. We feel sure that Mr.
St. John is a draughtsman ; few men can describe
things as he does, without also being able to illustrate
them ; and we would recommend the next time he
favours us with some of his sporting reminiscences,
to make them even more attractive than these
sketches. The following pen-and-ink one, however,
could hardly be improved. "After waiting an anxious
half-hour or more, we saw the deer suddenly spring
up, and after standing at gage for a moment, trot up
the hill, but not exactly in our direction. He came
to a flat spot, and then halted again, and looked ear-
nestly down into the glen. The shepherd was now in
full view, and the deer having looked at him fixedly
for a minute, seemed to recognise an old and harmless
acquaintance; and then turning, trotted deliberately,
at no great pace, straight towards us. We heard
every step he took as he trotted up the hard hill side ;
now and then he crossed a sloping piece of loose
timee i
nwge
seen,co ul I
butno t
s struck the
time he had to • k
forA fetharisofb
stones, and at one plc his way
aboutd passedt
li irttlyi e 0
rr
foocrktsy,
piece of
through a wet splashy .
ll ,
gravel, which rattled. as his hard hoof
marsh, which he did
deliberately and slowly, occasionally y looking round at
were concealed, that we might let
slip which we
mthoeveshnepohrelridft beoluorwbheiamda.
slip the hounds at a is
yards. The deer close
was now to us, not more than ten
had to wait till thde.
yards off, but we .
did not want to let the dogs go for
back again into
tdaenecre ofh a
fear of turning him the valley from
where the ground was
which he had come, not nearly
dogs as the
slope on the other
so favourable for the
dhim
side of us. We heartramp past us as he
along on the other side of the rocks
trotted slowly
behind which we
were
concealed. The
next moment
he had cleared the rockyand was in full
ground,
view about thirty yardsfrom us, on a wide expanse
of good heather ground. The
dogs saw him too,
feet, we slipped them. 'With one
and, getting to ourb . ~ • h
ehina nim, away went t e sta at
affrighted glance
fth lope a 'f anxious keep
first e s , s i to
first along the top
above the dogs; but finding pressed, himself hard he
turned his head down the hill, and the race began.
Down they went, dogs
the
close on the stag. Now
and then they tried to h. b • h
srin on im, ut his strength
enabled him ' h
iwaye either to shake
and quickness a
them • indeed, after running for
them off or elude
d r'athe t •
r o gain on the dogs
some distance he seeme .
_.
d Finding this, they seemed more
than.to lose groun
to
tire him out than to seize him,
intent upon trying
keeping somewhat above him,
and galloped along,.
as if to drivehim
into the burn, where he would
,rhe
stag tried again to ascend the
come to bay.manage ehis wind began to
slope, but could not Ina g it;