Meeting of British Association. 391 



of fiction, has to choose, and anxiously to weigh, where to lay his 

 €cene, knowing that, like the Painter, he is thus laying in the 

 background of his picture, which will give tone and colour to the 

 whole. The stern and dry reality of life is governed by the same 

 laws, and we are here living, feeling, and thinking under the in- 

 fluence of the local impressions of this northern seaport. The 

 choice appears to be a good one. The travelling philosophers 

 have bad to come far, but in approaching the Highlands of Scot- 

 land they meet Nature in its wild and primitive form, and Nature 

 as the object of their studies. The geologist will not find many 

 novelties in yonder mountains, because he will stand there on the 

 bare backbone of the globe, but the primary rocks, which stand 

 out in their nakedness, exhibit the grandeur and beauty of their 

 peculiar form, and in the splendid quarries of this neighbourhood 

 are seen to peculiar advantage the closeness and hardness of their 

 mass, and their inexhaustible supply for the use of man, made 

 available by the application of new mechanical powers. On this 

 primitve soil the botanist and zoologist will be attracted only by 

 a limited range of plants and animals, but they are the very species 

 which the extension of agriculture and increase of population are 

 gradually driving out of many pails of the country. On those 

 blue hills the red deer, in vast herds, holds undisturbed dominion 

 over the wide heathery forest, until the sportsman, fatigued and 

 unstrung by the busy life of the bustling town, invades the moor, 

 to regain health and vigor by measuring his strength with that 

 of the antlered monarch of the hill. But, notwithstanding all his 

 efforts to overcome an antagonist possessed of such superiority of 

 power, swiftness, caution, and keenness of all the senses, the 

 sportsman would find himself baffled, had not Science supplied 

 him with the telescope and those terrible weapons which seem 

 daily to progress in the precision with which they carry the 

 deadly bullet, mocking distance, to the mark. 



In return for the help which Science has afforded him, the 

 sportsman can supply the naturalist with many facts which he 

 alone has opportunity of observing, and which may assist the 

 solution of some interesting problems suggested by the life of the 

 ndeer. Man, also, the highest object of our study, is found in 

 vigorous, healthy development, presenting a happy mixture of the 

 Celt, Goth, Saxon, and Dane, acquiring his strength on the hills 

 and the sea. The Aberdeen whaler braves the icy regions of the 

 Polar Sea, to seek and to battle with the great monster of the 



