270 THE HOME OF A NATURALIST. 



almost everywhere. And we have multitudes of 

 sea-birds, some of which require no small dexterity 

 to knock over. If you are- a true sportsman, I take 

 it you will not appraise sport according to the market 

 value or edibility of your trophies of the chase, but 

 find its chief attraction and charm in the exercise 

 of skill, and in meeting and successfully surmounting 

 difficulties and sometimes dangers in its pursuit. I 

 could never see the sport of a battue. But standing 

 in a boat dancing on the always more or less agitated 

 water at the foot of their haunts in the high precipices, 

 it is capital sport to shoot puffins, guillimots and 

 cormorants, as they come whirring past you with the 

 velocity of an arrow. In this connection I quote the 

 words of our father in a paper on seal-hunting — " Often 

 we range along many miles of coast without meeting 

 with a single seal; but our wanderings are through 

 scenery the most majestic. Who that has ever looked 

 upon them, can forget these 'naked* and primitive 

 isles of the Northern Atlantic — their melancholy moors 

 and lonely valleys, their stupendous precipices and 

 foaming surfs, lowering clouds, and rushing maelstroms, 

 where the ancient lullaby of the infant Viking was the 

 hurricane, and his playground the ocean ! In these 

 wild and sequestered solitudes, unbroken by the 

 tumults of faction and the inroads of civilization, is 

 to be found that untrammelled freedom about which 

 philosophers reason and poets sing ; and it is well to 

 refresh ourselves, in this agitated period of the march 

 of matter, with those pure and ennobling sentiments 



