MACKENZIE THE BIRD-FANCIER, 309 



trust Mackenzie, for he is far and away at the head of his class, 

 positively unrivalled by any one else that we ever met with. Of 

 the ornithology of books, of ornithology as a science, with its 

 systems, classifications, genera, and species, he knows nothing, of 

 course, but he knows every bird you can refer to under some 

 favourite provincial cognomen, and he knows it so thoroughly that 

 no one could possibly know it better. It is true that he knows 

 little or nothing but birds, but he knows them so well (the birds of 

 Scotland), so intimately, from constant intercourse with them in 

 their native haunts and homes, that a " crack " with him about them, 

 when once you get him fairly started, is no ordinary treat to any 

 one so interested in all that concerns our wild-birds as we are, 

 and have been for well-nigh a quarter of a century. Remembering 

 that bird-catching is a sort of profession or trade, by which a 

 livelihood, however precarious, is encompassed, an affair of 

 demand and supply, with the usual prosaic result of pounds, 

 shillings, and pence or rather of shillings and pence without the 

 pounds, these last seldom tickling the palms or troubling the purses 

 of the order one would expect to find the bird-catcher a dull, 

 mechanical rogue, a mere bird-trapper and bird-seller in the dearest 

 market, with no more of poetry or sentiment about him than about 

 a white-aproned poulterer. This, however, is far from being the 

 case, at least not always nor even frequently, for Mackenzie, " Old 

 Cowie," and others that we could name, really and truly love birds 

 for their own sakes, without a thought frequently of their market 

 value, and you can gather as you converse with them from their 

 frequent references to the delights as well as the desagrements of 

 their profession, that they are by no means either unconscious of or 

 indifferent to the poetry of birds and bird life in their native 

 haunts, whether on moor or mountain side, by solitary tarn or 

 stream, in copse and wild wood, amid the wildernesses of inland 

 mountains or by the margin of the sea. We never knew any one 



