SUNDRY ANTIQUITIES. 167 



length, when within thirty or forty yards, he suddenly 

 caught sight of us, and at once rose into the air, and 

 was suffered to depart without molestation. 



Beyond the promontory lay a quiet little cove, and 

 as we approached a fishing-boat lying upside down on 

 the beach, a mountain hare, now almost white, sprang 

 from beneath its cover, and bounded up the cliff. I 

 fired ; but the animal, though much disabled, still 

 struggled on, and, to put an end to its sufferings, we 

 scrambled up the rocks in pursuit. On reaching a 

 birchen copse above the cliff, a long shot secured my 

 hare ; and pausing by the ruins of a deserted cottage, 

 I began to ponder upon the policy which had bartered 

 the lives of human beings for those of " the beasts that 

 perish," and desolated so many of what were once 

 happy hearths, merely to provide a greater range and 

 fuller security for the grouse, the moorfowl, the deer, 

 or the sheep. While occupied with these thoughts, I 

 remarked that the cottage had been built within what, 

 at first sight, I imagined to be one of the sacred circles 

 of the Druids ; but Johnny informed me that it was 

 one of those objects, so full of interest to the archaeo- 

 logist, as a vestige of an age and generation long since 

 passed away, the original use of which it is difficult to 

 decide, a Pictish tower. 



Forming a circle, about thirty yards in diameter, its 

 wall was nearly two yards in thickness, and though 

 crumbled away all round to the same horizontal level, 

 yet, from the great unevenness of the ground, it was 

 much higher in some parts than in others. Com- 

 posed entirely of blocks of stone, roughly hewn and 

 uncemented by any mortar, on one side, where the 

 ground sloped rapidly away, it still rose to the height 

 of about twenty feet ; and here I could distinguish 



