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PRACTICAL ORNITHOLOGY. 



THIRD LESSON. 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE MIDLAND PARTS OF THE MIDDLE DIVISION OF 

 SCOTLAND. BIRDS OBSERVED THERE. BEAULY FRITH. DESCRIPTION 

 OF CROMARTY FRITH. SEA BIRDS FOUND ON IT. FRITHS OF TAY AND 

 FORTH. WANDERERS. 



Few things can be more delightful to a person capable in 

 some measure of apprehending the varied phenomena of nature 

 than a rapid survey of a large extent of country, such as may 

 be made in a vehicle proceeding at the rate of ten miles an hour 

 over a succession of plains, valleys, and mountainous tracts, and 

 along rivers, estuaries, and arms of the sea. But I must cor- 

 rect myself : the true naturalist travels outside, and is not con- 

 tent with observing nature through a square foot or so of dim 

 glass. In summer no doubt such a ride would be more pleasant 

 than in the midst of winter, when the leafless trees shoot up 

 against the clear cold sky, when the hills are clad with their 

 snowy mantle, and the biting wind feels as if it penetrated 

 through flesh and sinews ; yet to the ornithologist the warm 

 season would aftbrd less gratification, for then the birds are dis- 

 persed over the fields and hills, scattered among the thickets 

 and woods, and concealed by the dense foliage. 



In the middle of March, I had the pleasure of performing 

 such a journey from Edinburgh to the town of Cromarty, 

 situated on the eastern coast of the northern division of Scot- 

 land. At Queensferry, where we crossed the Frith of Forth, 

 over whose placid waters gleamed from afar the white ridge of 

 the southern Grampians, were seen flocks of the Common and 

 Black-headed Gulls, Larus canus and L. ridibundus, with a 

 few individuals of the Great Black-backed species, L. marinus, 

 and some Ducks too distant to be distinguished. Between this 

 place and Kinross were observed numbers of the more common 



