THE WHEATEAR. 359 



from the rest of the world, living in a country of 

 natural phenomena, where a continual succession of 

 mists, and many shadows and sounds wafted far across 

 the otherwise silent wilderness who saw without in - 

 structors, and reflected without any thing to guide 

 them but their own observations, and the traditions of 

 their fathers, are considered, it will not be wondered at 

 that they should attempt to connect what they saw 

 with an ideal world, when their knowledge of the world 

 of realities was so limited. A cairn of stones being, 

 too, the ancient mode of sepulture, or at least, of pro- 

 tecting the remains of the fallen from the wolf and the 

 raven, and the wheatear choosing such places in pre- 

 ference to any others, helped to give a sort of super- 

 stitious character to the bird. Philosophy knows that 

 there is nothing more mysterious in a bird nestling 

 among the houses of the dead, than in the branches of 

 a laurel or a rose tree ; and that the bees that hived in 

 the dry skeleton of Sampson's lion were guided by no 

 different principle from that which would have led them 

 to a hollow tree, had that been in their way; but man, 

 in a state of nature, will always select as the cause why 

 animals resort to one place rather than another, the 

 association with that place in which he is interested 

 the most. That is the reason why the chlaichearan 

 got a suspicious character in the highlands ; and for 

 similar reasons other birds have been accounted of good 

 or evil omen, when just as innocent of either as the 

 wheatear. In cold northern countries, burial grounds 

 are among the places where insects most abound; and 

 there are generally some sort of monumental stones 

 there, however rude. Of such places the wheatear 



