X OKNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



glass-fronted carriage, I was the more easily enabled 

 to observe. 



In the course of the following rude narrative it will 

 be my intention simply to note down unostentatiously 

 the results of my personal experience as an ardent 

 lover of the works of Nature, both by flood and field, 

 in the indulgence of a long-cherished desire of ob- 

 serving the habits and breeding localities of many 

 of our rarer feathered denizens ; to enjoy the bold 

 grandeur of their almost inaccessible haunts ; and to 

 endeavour to obtain individual specimens, as contri- 

 butions to a private collection which I have of late 

 years been attempting to form. Nor need I weary 

 my readers by unnecessary detail, inasmuch as a 

 great portion of the ground to which I am now directing 

 my steps has been so ably described, and its natural 

 objects so interestingly sketched, by that eminent 

 sportsman and naturalist Charles St. John, the perusal 

 of whose charming work, * A Tour in Sutherlandshire 

 by Charles St. John, deceased," has tended so mate- 

 rially to enliven and augment the pleasure of my 

 present excursion. 



My train reached Glasgow very punctually to its 

 appointed hour the same evening, and I here took up 

 my quarters for the night. 



It was a glorious bright spring morning as the 

 gallant ' lona,' one of the best steam-ships of the 

 Hutcheson Company, left the quay, and steamed 



