200 A VISIT TO BRAEMAR. 



sight of one is said to betoken ill-luck, and so on through a list of mis- 

 fortunes according as two or three or more are seen together. In this neigh- 

 bourhood, during the present year, only two Magpies have come under my 

 notice. They had built their nest in a tree, situate in a field near the 

 village of Weston. I used to watch them frequently with much interest 

 before going into Berkshire, and upon returning home lost no time in going 

 to see how they were getting on: to my great disappointment they were 

 gone. Upon inquiry, I was told the birds had been shot, and the nest 

 destroyed. Upon expressing my sorrow ibr what had been done, the answer 

 was, ''Oh! they are nasty unlucky things, and we dont like to see them." 

 The Magpie was always a great favourite with me, and I look back 

 with regret to the time when his appearance was more frequent. Their 

 habits are sociable, seldom appearing singly. It was very interesting to 

 see them, with their gay feathers of shining black and white, and lively 

 actions, as they flew across one's path in small parties, and pitched at 

 short distances, with pert and jaunty hop and quick movement of their 

 long tails. (Let me hear from Mr. Fuller again. — F, 0. Morris.) 



Bath, June SOth., 1856. 



A VISIT TO BRAEMAR IN 1855. 



BY W. SUTHERLAND, ESQ. 



Leaving the ''granite city," on a bright Monday morning, towards the 

 end of July, (24th.,) 1855, we might have been seen early on the after- 

 noon of the same day, descending from the good old-fashioned stage-coach, 

 in the little less antiquated village of Castleton of Braemar. Thanks for 

 the comparatively rapid transit over a road of fifty-seven miles in this 

 essentially "Hieland" portion of Her Majesty's dominions, to the shade of 

 Watt, so far as the results of his glorious discovery have penetrated these 

 wilds, and last, not least, to the said stage of our forefathers. But although 

 we have thus summarily transported ourselves from one end of the Dee 

 almost to the other, in the space of half a dozen lines, we lay no claim 

 to the possession of the faculty celebrated in Eastern story, which is capable 

 of effecting a similar transit in as many seconds; and seeing that we take 

 too much selfish pleasure in "fighting our battles o'er again," we cannot 

 spare the reader the infliction of a paragraph on what we saw in the course 

 of our journey westward; and so, by way of preface, let him not suppose 

 that immediately on leaving the vicinity of the sea-coast, he is to be ushered 

 into such scenes of rocky sublimity and beauty as characterize the upper 

 course of this river. 



First, then, we have a ridge of rather tame but heath-clad hills, rising 

 gradually from the rocky coast, south of the river's mouth; these, if much 



