IN LITERATURE 17 



single exception of Gilbert White. A keen sportsman 

 and devoted admirer of nature, he was the most 

 practical and observant of naturalists. Nothing can 

 be more vivid or sympathetic than his first work, 

 "The Wild Sports of the Highlands" ; but in point 

 of method and accuracy he surpassed it afterwards 

 in his " Natural History and Sport in Moray -" and 

 his " Tour in Southerlandshire." In his choice of 

 residences he found admirable head-quarters for a man 

 of his particular tastes. At one time he rented 

 Invererne, on the Morayshire coast, a house lying 

 between the cultivated country and an unfrequented 

 waste of woods and sandhills ; and then he removed 

 to a mansion with a great old-fashioned garden in 

 the outskirts of the town of Elgin. Now he was 

 off on expeditions into the neighbouring mountains, 

 as when he made that famous stalk of his on the 

 " muckle hart of Benmore," or when he narrowly 

 escaped being buried under an avalanche when look- 

 ing for ptarmigan in their winter plumage. Now 

 he was filling a mixed bag nearer home with a mis- 

 cellaneous variety of lowland game, picked up in 

 the course of a hard day's walking. Now he was 

 stalking swans or geese on the Loch of Spynie or the 

 shores of the bay, creatures even harder to come at 

 than the wary red deer ; now he was watching for 

 wild duck in the dusk, as they streamed over his 

 lurking-place in their flight from the sea to their 

 feeding-grounds. He carried a gun in the season, 

 and was a deadly shot ; but the number of head 



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