156 
A SCIENTIFIC APPRECIATION [oh. vi. 
Nature’s Solace. 
Like many naturalists before him and after him, 
MacGillivray had a touch of Nature-Mysticism. 
The strings of his nature were so tuned that they 
responded readily to certain aspects of Nature, and 
found some satisfaction in the response. This is 
a deep and difficult question, but we may remind 
ourselves that Man was cradled and brought up 
in Nature, and that it is therefore a probable 
condition of emotional sanity that he should 
periodically return to the old home, as the migra¬ 
tory birds do. It is this that gives deep import 
to that “ uprush of feeling from below the ordinary 
level of consciousness,” which we experience when 
we allow the beauty and meaning of Nature to 
work upon us. 
It is probable, then, that we do not misunder¬ 
stand MacGillivray when we say that, apart from 
the theodicy which Nature always was to him, he 
found in certain of its aspects a mystical solace. 
Remembering his sensitive and plastic Celtic 
temperament, let us take in illustration of his 
outlook the remarkable passage that follows 1 — 
one of the most self-revealing in all his writings :— 
“ One accustomed to the scenery and habits of 
1 I owe my knowledge of the passage to my friend Dr Rudolf 
Galloway, Aberdeen, who has been loyal to the MacGillivray tradition 
in his devotion to birds and the breeding of them. It is from an 
article in the Northern Farmer , vol. i., p. 41, August 1844, entitled— 
“ On the Maritime Pastures of the Western and Eastern Coasts of 
Scotland.’ 1 
