HISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS 91 
Gaelic name he bore, “ Gillivray ”—servant of the 
truth; and the publication of The Origin of Species 
would probably have been hailed by him as the 
rising of a new sun in the heaven of science, and as 
bringing the light for which he had been prophetic¬ 
ally looking. He would probably have been able 
to see God’s creative power in Nature not less 
clearly and reverently than before-creative by a 
never-ceasing evolutionary process, a continual pro¬ 
gressive unfolding of the essential being of all exist¬ 
ences—an endless change and growth of organic 
form, making clearer to him the full significance of 
those very principles of classification which he had 
already adopted, with a deeper insight into the 
facts of Nature on which they rested, and which, 
through the mind of Darwin, had come to the 
scientific mind of the age as a new and great 
revelation. 
But besides the scientific aspect of the History 
of British Birds, that “great work” has other 
features which will always preserve its interest and 
attractiveness to many readers who may be unable 
to enter intelligently into the author’s scientific 
descriptions and deductions. The narratives of his 
excursions—often by night as well as by day; the 
difficulties encountered—at times with no little 
danger, especially while scrambling among the 
rocks of the Outer Hebrides, or climbing the cliffs 
of Ben Macdhui; his descriptions of scenery—now 
overpowering in its ruggedness and grandeur, and 
again tenderly soothing in its soft and varied 
