THE RUTHWELL CROSS 259 



It is a stirring sight to see the dauntless way the 

 osprey seizes his prey, dropping like a levin-bolt 

 from mid-air into the water, and grasping the fish 

 lengthways, parallel with the bird's own body, with 

 strong hooked claws. Human artifices of nets and 

 hooks and endless apparatus, seem contemptible com- 

 pared with such chivalrous warfare. 



LXXIX 



Space, light, and cool still air, with mingled odours 

 from the brine and the new ploughing. The Rut]i 

 Low in the southern sky wheels the well Cross 

 November sun, flashing miles of wet sand into 

 dazzling radiance, and silvering the placid waters 

 of Solway. High on the west, beyond the Nith, 

 rises the granite bulk of Crifiel ; on the hither side 

 of the river, some five or six miles from where I 

 stand, loom the dark towers of Caerlaverock, ruined 

 and roofless now, and dozing in decrepitude among 

 their ancient trees, but once the centre of military 

 stir the chief defence of the western Scottish 



present season iu the Highlands. From the same source comes the 

 melancholy intelligence of the following victims to wanton perse- 

 cution in the same season : a Greenland falcon, from Portree 

 Skye ; a snowy owl from Forsinard ; a night-heron from Barra 

 a roller from East Lothian, and a hoopoe from Stirlingshire, 



