NOVEMBER 207 



so the wax wing, which seems to be guided by sheer 

 chance in the choice of a spot. 



To use a Scots expression, few birds are more 

 ' kenspeckle ' that is, easy of recognition than the 

 wax wing. About the size of a thrush, the colour scheme 

 is much the same in both sexes, being only slightly less 

 bright in the female than in the male. The distin- 

 guishing feature which has earned for the bird its 

 popular English name consists in the shafts of four or 

 five of the secondary wing feathers being prolonged 

 and expanded into a flattened knob resembling scarlet 

 sealing-wax. The purpose of this singular process 

 seems to be purely decorative, which it certainly fulfils ; 

 but the Eskimo put a sinister interpretation on it, 

 declaring that these appendages are the clotted blood 

 of the waxwing's victims; wherefore they have given 

 it a name signifying in their language ' the small-bird 

 killer.' The imputation is quite groundless, for the 

 waxwing is believed to subsist on insects in summer 

 and on berries at other seasons. 



LI 



Except to students of Scottish topography and biblio- 

 graphy, the name of Timothy Pont probably Timothy 

 conveys but a faint impression, if any, to the Pont 

 present generation of his countrymen ; but any one who, 

 like myself, attempts to visualise Scottish landscape as 

 it was three hundred years ago, will hold that name in 

 honour as having been borne by one who undertook an 

 enterprise of no common magnitude, and carried it 

 through in the teeth of prodigious difficulties. 



