158 SUMMER-TIDE IN A HIGHLAND FOREST 



the ring-ousel. Nevertheless no feathered thing is stirring 

 save the all-pervading titlark, as faithful to the waste as 

 the sparrow to the house-top, and two or three pairs of 

 the amiable, elegant wheatear. The corrupt form of this 

 name is a good illustration of the tendency, well known 

 to philologers, of people of every language to twist words 

 of which the meaning has been forgotten, so as to repre- 

 sent some other meaning, however irrelevant. Why, 

 otherwise, should a bird which has no visible ear-covert, 

 and certainly does not eat wheat, become known as the 

 wheat-ear ? The most conspicuous thing about the little 

 creature is its dazzling white rump, which it displays 

 continually as it flits from stone to stone before the 

 traveller. What more natural, then, than that the country- 

 man should give it in Anglo-Saxon the name of hwit cars 

 — white-rump ? 



But hark ! the hanging wood beyond the river resounds 

 with a shrill cry. Out with the Zeiss lens, and, following 

 the gillie's brown forefinger, I can detect the crag where 

 a pair of golden eagles have their eyrie. Their solitary 

 offspring is still on the nest, and it is he whose voice 

 sounds shrill above the rising wind. Suddenly from the 

 mist on the top out sails a dark form on broad pinions. 

 One of the parent birds swoops in narrowing circles 

 towards the eyrie. The cry of the nestling is stayed, but, 

 so far as the glass reveals the secrets of this household, 

 the queen-mother brought nothing in her talons. Queen ! 

 yes, but a discrowned one. These men of science are 

 terrible revolutionaries — not republicans, mark ye, for 

 they must have a monarch ; but they have dethroned the 

 eagle — the very emblem of empire, and we are told now 

 to reverence the crows as the legitimate royal family, 



