XXVII. 



IONA, November 4, 1850. 



MY DEAR MOTHER, I send you a pair of magpies as an 

 addition to the bird book. I hope they will arrive safe, and I 

 would be obliged to you if you would stick them in. I got my 

 father's letter saying that the goose came safe, and that he was 

 going to Paris with Car. You must keep a vacancy open in the 

 bird book for a splendid fellow which I captured this morning, 

 and I am now taking his portrait. Poor fellow ! first he is to be 

 drawn by me, and then by the cook. I will show him off in a 

 plate, she will serve him up in a dish ; his likeness will exercise 

 my palette, while his carcase (roasted, and well stuffed with 

 onions) will gratify our palates. This illustrious stranger is a 

 greylag goose a bird peculiar to the Hebrides. I once got one 

 before, but have not had his picture yet; it is very different 

 from the bernacle goose. This morning I awoke by hearing Colin 

 (who has got a hawk's eye for birds) shouting, " See the goose ! 

 see the wild goose ! " In exactly one minute and thirty seconds 

 I had my clothes on, and, gun in hand, I was out. The goose 

 had come and alighted along with our tame geese about thirty 

 yards from my window. The tame geese, however, drove the 

 stranger off immediately ; Colin and I set off after him. It has 

 been blowing a gale here for five days, and to-day was tremendous. 

 We at last overtook our friend in an open cornfield, where we 

 could not approach him, so we watched till he went to some 

 broken ground, then I stalked him carefully. I went to wind- 

 ward of him, because the wind was so powerful that the shot 

 would not have carried so far against it, and in such a case it is 



