180 SPRING. 



elements. And the dissolving snow, which shows the 

 green earth to man, shows to the raven an abundance 

 of food. Notwithstanding the healthful and ferti- 

 lizing effects of the snow, it fills the earth with car- 

 casses. Even in the low grounds, the number of 

 small quadrupeds and birds that die of hunger, of 

 cold, or of suffocation, is considerable ; and as the 

 mountains are approached, the numbers augment. 

 Hares, grous, alpine hares, ptarmigans, all partially 

 yield to the winter ; there are also a few deer that 

 perish in the high forests, and a few sheep on the hill 

 pastures ; and the ravens hasten, along with the carrion 

 crows, to clear the surface of their remains : occasionally 

 too, an adventurous shepherd, hunter, or traveller, may 

 have missed his way upon the hill, or been overtaken 

 by the dark hurricane of the snow storm ; and benumbed 

 and unable to proceed, have sunk into that fatal sleep 

 of cold, from which man never awakens. Fortunately 

 such occurrences are now rare in this country, and 

 probably they never were numerous ; but those who 

 tempt the passes of the Andes in the snowy season, 

 often leave their flesh to the condor, in consequence of 

 the " temporales" there ; and there have been instances 

 at times not very remote, of similar catastrophes upon 

 the Grampians. The date is a matter of little moment ; 

 but we were once shown, in a lonely dell of the Mo- 

 nachleagh, between Athol and Badenoch, a little 

 cairn of stones, marking the place where the bones of 

 two brothers had been found, late in the spring, or 

 early in the summer, deprived of the greater part of 

 their covering by the crow and the raven, and bleach- 

 ing in the wilderness ; and the finders were led to the 



