I A Gossip on a Stitkerla^td Hill-side 221 



martrixes, hares, and foumarts. In these fforests, 

 and in all this province, ther is great store of 

 partridges, pluviers, capercaleys, blackwaks, mure- 

 fowls, heth-hens, swanes, bewters, turtledoves, herons, 

 dowes, steares or stairlings, lair-igig or knag (which 

 is a foull like unto a paroket or parret, which makes 

 place for her nest with her beck in the oak-tree), 

 duke, draig, widgeon, teale, wildgoose, rin goose, 

 gouls, wharps, shot wharps, woodcock, larkes, 

 sparrowes, snyps, blackbuirds, and all other kinds of 

 wildfowl and birds which are to be had in any pairt 

 of this kingdom.' 



Well put in, that last, Sir Robert, or we should 

 have had to transcribe the index to Yarrell's Birds, 

 for even to this day, Sutherland is a most marvellous 

 country for ' fowl ' ; north enough to be the breed- 

 ing-place of the wild goose and the widgeon, and the 

 winter resting-place of innumerable rare arctic birds, 

 and yet warm enough, thanks to the Gulf-stream, to 

 suit the roller and the Bohemian waxwing. Some 

 individuals in Sir Robert's list have disappeared, as, 

 for example, the capercailzie, probably from the 

 destruction of the woods ; and no one, I fancy, who 

 knows him, grieves much at his absence, for two or 

 three birds, the size of turkeys, to the square mile, 

 affording no sport themselves, and not permitting 

 any sport-affording bird to approach their haunts, 

 and, moreover, rather apt to taste like particularly 

 tough old blackcocks, stuffed with blacking-brushes 

 and a dash of turpentine, can hardly be worth the 



