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

MAGAZINES-(CONTINUUD).
MURRAY'S HOME and COLONIAL LIBRARY.
Wild Sports and Natural History of the llighlands.—
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 cin 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 Glasgo w
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. The prevailing colour of the hedge-spar-
row's nest is green, and her eggs 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
nests to the colour of the surrounding substances, and
dib
le Thes grain-feeding birds having
while those of the that of their own eggs respectively. In the same
short,hich strongthey live.man
manner they all have bills adapted to the food on
w
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
gravel, which rattled as his hard hoofs struck the
stones, and at one time he had to pick his way
through a wet splashy
piece of marsh, which he did
deliberately and slowly, occasionally looking round at
the shepherd below him.
At this time we could not
or fear of being seen, but
move nor lift our heads f
we were concealed, that we might let
amongst which
had to wait till the had
ohfaadbopuatssethdirttyheorrfooorktsy,
slip the hounds at a
1 t
did not want to let the dogs for
yards off, but we
himlgo
yards. The deer was nbowekc close uins,tonotthme ovraelethyafnrtoemn
fear of turning a
the dogs as the slope on the other
so favourable for
which he had come, wherethteheogtrhoeurpnd. was not ntohtenreoacrilcys
Nast
of us as he
trotted slowly along
on
Thesi
behind which we were concealed.next moment
the rocky ground, and was in full
he had cleared
yards from •
us, on a wide expanse
view about thirty yar
The
side of us. We heard him tram
dogs saw him too,
our feet, we slipped them. with one
and, getting to
behind him, away went the stag, at
affrighted glance
of the slope, as if anxious to keep
first along the top
but finding himself hard pressed, he
above the dogs; down the hill, and the race began.
turned his read
t,
of good heather ground.
triedthe dogs close on the stag. Now
to spring on him, but his strength
enabled him either to shake
and quickness alwayselude
them ; indeed, after running for
them off or
eeme rather to gain on the
some distance he sd
Finding this, they seemed more
Danodwtnhet
than to lose ground
to tire him out than to seize him,
hhetyheNyven
intent upon trying
and galloped
to bay. The along,
keeping somewhat above him,
as if to drive him into the burn, where he would
come
staganage tried again to ascend the
it; his wind began to
slope, but could not m