THE 
WILD SPORTS AND NATURAL HISTORY 
OF 
THE HIGHLANDS. 
INTRODUCTION. 
I wave lived for several years in the northern counties of Scot- 
land, and during the last four or five in the province of Moray, 
a part of the country peculiarly adapted for collecting facts in 
Natural History, and for becoming intimate with the habits of 
many of our British wild birds and quadrupeds. Having been 
in the habit of keeping an irregular kind of journal, and of 
making notes of any incidents which have fallen under my ob- 
servation 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 Na- 
ture. 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 avocation, and have in 
consequence made myself tolerably well acquainted with the 
domestic economy of most of our British fere nature, 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 scenery 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 lover of the picturesque. The rapid and 
B 
