Birds. 3075 



over, as in every branch both of literature and science, there are 

 certain names which have obtained a great, and, what is very likely, a 

 justly merited ascendancy. These are regarded as authorities in the 

 domain with which they are respectively connected. To the opinions 

 and the statements which they have put forth, there are attached the 

 weight and the imagined infallibility of an oracle. Upon the minds 

 of many who delight in the works of Nature, authorities such as these 

 would seem to have the power of an appalling and ever present 

 phantom. They exercise over them an influence, in consequence of 

 which it might almost appear as if they were deprived of the free and 

 the unfettered use of their senses. The feeling from which a condi- 

 tion like this arises, is no doubt to a certain extent commendable ; but 

 when it is carried to the excess of which we are speaking, it is pro- 

 ductive of the most serious disadvantages, and is even a formidable 

 drawback to the progress of literature and especially of science. 

 There are more individuals than we should be inclined to believe, who 

 are unwilling to make public either what they think, or what they have 

 seen and heard, principally, if not entirely, from a fear lest their re- 

 flections and their statements should be at variance with those which 

 have been put on record by the authorities to whom we are referring, 

 and which, in consequence, have come to be regarded as fixed and 

 undoubted truths that are not for a moment to be called in question. 

 And it cannot but be acknowledged that for such a fear there are par- 

 donable grounds. For it would appear to be with many a sort of 



British Birds,' of the blackcock, the rock dove, the oyster-catcher, the lapwing, the 

 dunlin, the common sandpiper, the green sandpiper, and the sketch which is given in 

 the introduction to his last volume, of a flat, sandy, and oozy coast, and which is 

 perhaps drawn from what is to be witnessed on the Solway Firth. As evidence that 

 he has the eye of a painter and the feeling of a poet, take his note on the curlew as 

 the bird is seen and heard in a misty morning of spring. (Edit, of Wilson's ' Ame- 

 rican Ornithology,' vol. iii. p. 44). The greatest objection which may be made to his 

 writings is perhaps a not unfrequent want of precision and even of accuracy in his 

 •style. 



It would probably be impossible to bring forward a more striking proof of the 

 amazing changes and improvements which have taken place in this country, than the 

 difference between those avocations in which Sir William Jardine finds to-day his 

 delight, and those which formed the pursuit of his steel-clad ancestors, when their 

 principal excitement was in all likelihood the Border foray, and when the motto of the 

 family ' Cave adsum,'— 1 beware, 1 am at hand;— was no doubt singularly appropriate, 

 and, as it fell on the ear of the Southron, might well make him bestir himself for the 

 safety of his possessions. 



