MEMOIR. 19 



my next visit to London, I arranged for him the sale of the whole 

 chapters, the produce of his last winter's industry, which Mr 

 Murray brought out in the popular volume of " Wild Sports and 

 Natural History in the Highlands." 



St John's life was, I believe, much happier from the occupation 

 thus supplied. He kept journals more regularly from thence- 

 forward, and he became an authority to be consulted on all ques- 

 tions of Scotch sport. He had already become, I may say, the 

 friend of all his neighbours, and many regretted his change of 

 abode, which took place two years later. 



St John formed acquaintance and commenced a life friendship 

 with another person while at Invererne, whose tastes and habits 

 much resembled his own a good naturalist and accurate observer, 

 a lover of sport on hill and river and loch, and, curiously, a keeper 

 of a journal with much more regularity and accuracy than his 

 friend ever arrived at. This was Captain Gumming, now Sir Alex. 

 Gordon Gumming of Altyre, with whom St John, during the later 

 years of his life, when they were brought nearer together in resi- 

 dence, associated, partook of sport, corresponded, more constantly 

 and confidentially, perhaps, than with any other. 



Unfortunately, St John was not in the habit of preserving his 

 correspondents' letters, and I am thus able to give only one letter 

 from Captain Gumming, which may have been in his friend's mind 

 when he contrasts the salmon-fisher of the Findhorn with the 

 gentle angler of the lower pools at p. 222, " Sport in Moray." 



Sir Alexander's letter contains a wonderfully intelligible 

 account of a morning's fishing. The scene is on the river 

 Findhorn, above the junction of the Divie. Rannoch is the 

 name of a spot where there is a " brig of ae hair," a single 

 log thrown across the torrent. 



From Captain A. P. G. GUMMING to Mr ST JOHN, June 20, 1848. 



MY DEAR ST JOHN, Do you remember saying a salmon was as good 

 as lost if he went over the Ess on the Findhorn at Relugas 1 A strong 

 and active fish played me a trick last week, and contradicted your idea, 

 by taking me down from Rannoch over the Fall as far as the Pool above 



