XVIII. 



IONA, 2Qtk February 1853. 



I REGRET to think that the correspondence that we have so 

 agreeably kept up for the last year and upwards must soon 

 meet with a check. I propose leaving lona for London, and 

 have a very great inclination to go out to Canada for a visit, or 

 perhaps for a permanent residence. I have already visited 

 Lower Canada and been along the coast as far north as Labrador, 

 and still further in a southern direction. In fact, I can say that 

 I have killed White Egrets in the West Indian Islands, Pelicans 

 at Port Eoyal, and Boobies at the Bahamas ; but at that time, 

 alas ! I let pass glorious opportunities of ornithologising. On this 

 occasion the case will be very different, for I look forward with 

 delightful anticipations to the prospect of killing, to me, new 

 races of birds, or the still greater pleasure of occasionally hailing 

 an old friend such, for instance, as the Great Northern Diver, 

 which seems to be identical on both sides of the Atlantic. 

 Certainly, in future, wherever the locality in which I am cast, 

 there shall I carry with me a love for Natural History, which 

 will always furnish me with a most agreeable recreation, a solace, 

 a retirement, a refuge always open to fly to from the accidents or 

 annoyances of life. 



At the present day Ornithology takes its place as a respectable 

 science, and especially as a popular and pleasing one. Blackwood 

 remarks : " We remember the time when the very word 

 Ornithology would have required interpretation in mixed com- 



