16 COUNTRY LIFE 



recesses of some sombre glen that is seldom illuminated 

 by the sunbeams. We should never grudge the otter 

 his fish, though his habits of feeding are decidedly 

 wasteful, so long as we had the pleasure of seeing him 

 slip silently off the bank of the stream and dive oilily 

 into the water, leaving a trail of bubbles behind him. 

 Nor can anything be more weird of an autumn night, 

 when the moon is shining fitfully through a grey drift 

 of clouds, than the long, mournful cry of the wild 

 cat from the loose boulders among the fir-trees on 

 the banks of some lonely loch. We delight to see 

 the grey forms of the badgers rooting like spectral 

 pigs in the dusk, when the screech-owls are just begin- 

 ning their music. So we respond heartily to the 

 lament of Mr. Colquhoun when he tells us how 

 hawks and eagles, otters and wild cats, marten-cats 

 and badgers, have been disappearing from the Luss 

 country on the banks of Loch Lomond and elsewhere, 

 since he used to shoot as a boy over his father's 

 domains. 



Take them all in all, however, the books on High- 

 land shooting and Scotch natural history that please 

 us the most are decidedly those of Mr. St. John. 

 An Englishman by birth, he was long domiciled in 

 Scotland, because it was there that he could indulge 

 his bent to the uttermost. Fond of society, and formed 

 to live in it, he gave it up for the greater attractions 

 of the wilds. For long he would persist in asserting 

 that he had no vocation for the pen. Yet no man 

 has written better on his favourite subjects, with the 



