SHOOTING. 



37 



fissure filled with sediment from above, adding with a sneer 

 that there were men who maintained that it had been injected 

 from beneath in a molten condition. When I think of this 

 lecture, I do not wonder that I determined never to attend 

 to Geology. 



From attending 's lectures, I became acquainted with 



the curator of the museum, Mr. Macgillivray, who afterwards 

 published a large and excellent book on the birds of Scotland. 

 I had much interesting natural-history talk with him, and he 

 was very kind to me. He gave me some rare shells, for I at 

 that time collected marine mollusca, but with no great zeal. 



My summer vacations during these two years were wholly 

 given up to amusements, though I always had some book in 

 hand, which I read with interest. During the summer of 

 1826 I took a long walking tour with two friends with knap- 

 sacks on our backs through North Wales. We walked thirty 

 miles most days, including one day the ascent of Snowdon. 

 I also went with my sister a riding tour in North Wales, a 

 servant with saddle-bags carrying our clothes. The autumns 

 were devoted to shooting chiefly at Mr. Owen's, at Woodhouse, 

 and at my Uncle Jos's,* at Maer. My zeal was so great that I 

 used to place my shooting-boots open by my bed-side when I 

 went to bed, so as not to lose half a minute in putting them 

 on in the morning ; and on one occasion I reached a distant 

 part of the Maer estate, on the 20th of August for black-game 

 shooting, before I could see : I then toiled on with the game- 

 keeper the whole day through thick heath and young Scotch 

 firs. 



I kept an exact record of every bird which I shot through- 

 out the whole season. One day when shooting at Wood- 

 house with Captain Ov/en, the eldest son, and Major Hill, his 

 cousin, afterwards Lord Berwick, both of whom I liked very 

 much, I thought myself shamefully used, for every time after 

 I had fired and thought that I had killed a bird, one of the 

 two acted as if loading his gun, and cried out, "You must not 



* Josiah Wedgwood, the son of the founder of the Etruria Works. 



