WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS 



Spey and Ness," but on 12th July 1856 he was called a- 

 way to "the better land," leaving a sorrowing wife, three 

 sons and one daughter. 



The memory of Charles St John is as closely associated 

 with the gorges of the Findhorn and the lonely lakes of 

 Sutherland as that of William Scrope is with the gentler 

 Tweedandthecorries of Glen Tilt, or that of IzaakWalton 

 with the Hampshire meadows and the lucid Dove. But St 

 John was acloserobserverof nature than eitherofthese,and 

 he used his opportunity to good purpose in studying the 

 habits of animals, for some of which the naturalist may 

 now watch in vain, so sorely has stringent game-preserv- 

 ation told upon birds and beasts of prey. The value of St 

 John's contributions to natural history consists in their 

 being a plain statement of what came under his own vigil- 

 ant eyes. Hearsay he would never repeat, unless with a 

 caveat; he never attempted fine writing; but all he wrote is 

 readable, because it had its source in knowledge and ex- 

 perience. 



Science, however, is progressive; many problems in 

 natural history have been partly or completely solved in 

 the sixty years that have run since St John died; and I 

 have ventured to add a few notes where the author comes 

 a little short of accuracy; also, as the classification of ver- 

 tebrates has been revised since his day, I have given the 

 modernequivalent of the scientific termsusedbyhimwhere 

 these have become obsolete. 



In two respects only have I presumed to tamper with 

 the text, besides correctinga fewobvious misprints; first, by 



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