THE TURTLE-DOVE. 141 



at any hour and in any direction, you cannot fail to be charmed 

 ■with the infinite variety of pictures that present themselves for 

 your admiration, pictures which, while they only charm and 

 enchant the ordinary beholder, delight at once and distress the 

 artist — delight him by their marvellous beauties, but distress him 

 not the less, because he cannot with all his cunning transfer these 

 beauties in their entirety to canvas. An American gentleman 

 whom we met the other day candidly confessed that, although he 

 had gone over most of his native land, and made the tour of Con- 

 tinental Europe and the East, he had not in aU his travels seen 

 anything more beautiful than the shores of Loch Linnhe, Loch Leven, 

 and Lochiel at sunset on a fine evening in June. The late Dr. 

 Alton of Dolphinton told us on his return from Palestine that he 

 had seen nothing at all to equal Loch Linnhe on a summer's evening. 

 In all the breadth of his native Doric, which he always employed 

 in familiar conversation, he declared there was " naething in a' the 

 Archipelago till touch't," and we have heard Dr. Norman Macleod 

 on his return from India express himself very much to the same 

 effect. The Queen says in her Journal that " the scenery in Loch 

 Linnhe is magnificent— such beautiful mountains." 



A specimen of a very rare bird, shot by the keeper in Ardgour 

 Garden a few days ago, has been kindly sent to us by Mr. Maclean. 

 It turns out to be a male in beautiful plumage of the turtle-dove 

 {Columba turtur, Linn. ; La tourterelle of Buffon), a bird rarely 

 seen anywhere in Scotland, and which, except in this instance, has 

 never, so far as we are aware, been met with in the West 

 Highlands. We remember seeing a young bird, a female in imma- 

 ture plumage, that was said to have been shot somewhere near 

 Falkland Palace in the summer of 1847, from which it was 

 reasonably concluded that a pair of these beautiful birds had in 

 that year at least nidified and reared their young somewhere in the 

 Howe of Fife. Except in the case of the specimen now before us, 



