THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 17 
but a sportsman ever thinks of going, he will be 
certain to see things noteworthy, which the mere 
naturalist would never find, simply because he could 
never guess that they were there to be found. I 
do not speak merely of the rare birds which may 
be shot, the curious facts as to the habits of fish 
which may be observed, great as these pleasures 
are. I speak of the scenery, the weather, the geo- 
logical formation of the country, its vegetation, and 
the living habits of its denizens. A sportsman, out 
in all weathers, and often dependent for success on 
his knowledge of “what the sky is going to do,” 
has opportunities for becoming a meteorologist which 
no one beside but a sailor possesses; and one has 
often longed for a scientific gamekeeper or hunts- 
man, who, by discovering a law for the mysterious 
and seemingly capricious phenomena of “scent,” 
might perhaps throw light on a hundred dark 
passages of hygrometry. The fisherman, too,— 
what an inexhaustible treasury of wonder lies at 
his feet, in the subaqueous world of the commonest 
mountain burn! All the laws which mould a 
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