288 SUMMER. 



tany and zoology, where a stranger would never think 

 of looking for them. 



In so far as animals are concerned, there are also 

 some peculiar advantages in the vicinity of a cascade, 

 especially if it be upon a grand scale. There is a 

 power in the ear of animals, as well as in that of man, 

 to accommodate itself to a permanent sound. Sailors 

 can converse together amid the roaring of the wind 

 and waves, and so can the people in a manufactory, 

 the booming, rattling, and thumping of which are 

 enough to make a stranger deaf. But still, the noise 

 must have some effect, and even they who have been 

 accustomed to it the longest cannot possibly hear so 

 well as if it were not there, and the difficulty must be 

 greater, in the case of a strange sound, than of one with 

 which they are familiar. There are some British in- 

 habitants of the wood that we have never been able to 

 come so near, and watch so long, as among the rugged 

 trees by the side of a waterfall, to which we had 

 escaped from the intense heat of the sun upon the hill 

 above. There is then nothing of the music of the 

 birds, because that is drowned in the thunder of the 

 falling flood; but that and the delightful freshness, 

 and the fragrance of the birches, of which there is 

 usually a considerable mixture among the other trees 

 around a highland waterfall, the more aged ones sweep- 

 ing and waving their long dependent twigs in the 

 stream, make ample recompense. One of the birds 

 that we have had the best sight oj there [it was at the 

 lower fall of Foyers, on the Feachlin near Loch Ness ; 

 and there is no better field for a naturalist than the 



