BLACK-THROATED DIVERS. 169 



near them. One of them got among the rushes and tried 

 to dive, but it would not do. I took them in my hand, 

 and immediately heard the parents uttering wild cries of 

 anger and anxiety ; so I laid them down and went to the 

 other side of the loch, that their wild though sweet home 

 might not be disturbed. The loch is a little one among 

 the hills, with a good sprinkling of natural birch wood at 

 one end. We fished it last year, though unsuccessfully, 

 owing to the violence of the wind On Monday, we 

 started again for Loch Craggie, Sir William and Selby 

 each armed with their fowling pieces, and much excited 

 by my account of the divers and their woolly young ones. 

 Alas, for sentiment in the hands or hearts of those ruth- 

 less destroyers ! When I thought of the happy moon- 

 light nights, the bright mornings, the gorgeous sunsets, 

 the balmy twilights which these magnificent birds had 

 enjoyed together, and how little they had dreamed that 

 their wild solitudes, environed by crags and almost covered 

 with water, should be invaded by the authors of ' Ornith- 

 ology Made Easy,' I almost regretted for the time that I 

 had betrayed their secret. But knowing that Sir William 

 an 1 Mr Selby had spent the greater part of Saturday in a 

 vain attempt to obtain a pair which they had discovered 

 on Loch Shin, I thought it wrong to conceal an ornitho- 

 logical fact of such importance. So I directed them to 

 the island where I knew the birds would be, and the con- 



