312 NETHER LOCHABER. 



toothed and hooked at the point. When Mackenzie catches the 

 offender he is now ia search of, we shall have something more to 

 say about the butcher-bird, if butcher-bird it proves to be. 



We have noticed, by the way, that aU bird-catchers — all at 

 least with whom we have had any acquaintance^are prodigious 

 tea-drinkers, not sipping the grateful beverage from cups, observe, 

 but literally drinking it in bowls'-full. They have assured us that 

 they find it the best thing they can take, not merely as a refresher, 

 but as a long sustaining element in their dietary throughout their 

 many wanderings by flood and field. And like all large tea- 

 drinkers, bird-catchers are a very sober class of men ; that they 

 should be so is indeed a necessity of their craft, for a knock-kneed, 

 shaky-handed, blear-eyed, nerveless bird-catcher would be as unfit 

 for the successful prosecution of the labours incident to his profes- 

 sion, as would a similar physical wreck be for the successful 

 manipulation of his tools in the more minute and delicate depart- 

 ments of mathematical instrument making. 



