Wild SPORtS OP TH£ tilG^ftLANbS 



observation connected with the zoology of the country, I have 

 now endeavoured, by dint of cutting and pruning those rough 

 sketches, to put them into a shape calculated to amuse, and 

 perhaps, in some slight degree, to instruct some of my fellow- 

 lovers of Nature. From my earliest childhood I have been 

 more addicted to the investigation of the habits and manners 

 of every kind "of living animal than to any more useful avoca- 

 tion, and have in consequence made myself tolerably well 

 acquainted with the domestic economy of most of our British 

 ferce natures, from the field-mouse and wheatear, which I stalked 

 and trapped in the plains and downs of Wiltshire during my 

 boyhood, to the red deer and eagle, whose territory I have 

 invaded in later years-- -on- "the- mountains of Scotland. My 

 present abode In' Morayshire is surrounded by as great a 

 variety of beautiful sc.enery as can be found in any district in 

 Britain ; and no part of the country can produce a greater 

 variety of objects of interest either to the naturalist or to the 

 lovef of the picturesque. The .rapid and glorious Findhorn,^ 

 the very perfection of a Highland riyer, here passes through 

 one of the most fertile plains in Scotland, or indeed in the 

 wodd ; and though a few miles higl\er up it rages through the 

 wildest and most rugged rocks, and through the romantic and 

 shaded glens of the forests of Darnaway and Altyre, the stream, 

 as if 'exhausted, empties itself peaceably and quietly into the 

 Bay of Findhorn, a salt-water loch of some four or five miles 

 in lengthj entirely shyt out by different points of land from the 

 storms which are so frequent in the Moray Firth, of which it 

 forms a kind of creek. At low-water this bay becomes an 

 extent of wet sand, with the river Findhorn and one or two 

 smaller streams winding through it, till they meet in the deeper 

 part of the basin near the town of Findhorn, where there is 

 always a considerable depth of water, and a harbour for shipping. 

 From its sheltered situation and the quantity of food left 

 on the sands at low-water, the Bay of Findhorn is always a 

 great resort of wild-fowl of all kinds, from the swan to the 

 teal, and also of innumerable waders of every species ; while 

 occasionally a seal ventures into the mouth of the river in 



1 Every one interested in the Findhorn should read Sir T. D. Lauder's admirable 

 boolc, Tke Moray Floods in iS2g. The character of the river, and the calamities which 

 in that year followed the sudden floods to which it is liable, are particularly pointed out 

 in it. 



