124 THE BIRDS OF IONA AND MULL. 



intelligible to a sportsman, and which has often struck me. 

 Measure off exactly 50 yards in the garden, or before the house, 

 across flower-bed and gravel walk ; it looks a " stunning long 

 shot." Step off the same on the bare hill-side it looks like 

 nothing ; while upon the still smoother surface of the sea it 

 looks less (excuse the Hibernicism) ; and one not accustomed to a 

 boat bangs away at birds out of shot, wondering he does not hit 

 them. Talk of sermons in stones ! Here is a moral in a 

 measuring tape namely, that the marked and varied life of 

 one who " knocks about " in the world seems of much greater 

 length than the same short span of one, like the Vicar of Wake- 

 field, whose whole adventures were those of the fireside, and 

 whose only migrations were from the blue bed to the brown. 



Enough of secular subjects now to the divine study of birds ! 

 And let us begin with the sacred bird of Eome, the noble Goose. 



A little book called Rural Economy, among many excellent 

 directions about the management of beast and bird, contains this 

 shocking statement : " A breeding stock consists of five geese and 

 a gander." All the blood in my body rushes to my face, threaten- 

 ing an immediate attack of apoplexy, as I repeat it ; but I cannot 

 hold my peace and hear my worthy friend traduced and calum- 

 niated. The Gander accused of polygamy ! Our best friend at 

 bed and board ; ever a warm and yielding one at the former, and 

 the glory of the latter where, if not exactly the friend of our 

 bosom, he is at least that of an adjoining region. Besides all which, 

 he is concerned in the writing of everything ever written that 

 is worth reading excepting what was inscribed by the antique 

 stylus, or is scrawled with a crow-quill in delicate angular 



