PREFACE.

THE framework upon which are built the following twelve chapters, principally on Shooting and Fishing— the leading Scottish Field Sports-consisted of a series of articles written for the Glasgow Herald in 1858. The proprietors of that influential journal having handsomely placed the copyright at the disposal of Messrs Thomas Murray & Son, the author has greatly extended his remarks, so as to render the volume worthy of the enterprise of the Publishers, and as some return for the compliment paid to himself, that a house of so extended experience should consider his fugitive writings worthy of their notice and republication. He only hopes that the public may be of the same opinion. If he can in any degree succeed in diminishing the opinion too commonly accepted in this country, that Field Sports are of an immoral tendency, he will be amply rewarded. There cannot be a greater proof of the danger of confounding terms, than that of Field Sports having been

jumbled up in one common meaning with degrading

amusements.

The author cannot avoid here noticing the beauty of the three sketches on wood by Mrs Eleanor Brown. When the reader is informed that these are the first attempts at such illustrations by that talented artistthe very first productions of her pencil upon wood, without any previous instruction-he may form some idea of what increased practice and experience may make her in one of the most difficult yet most useful and charming branches of Art.

SCOTTISH FIELD SPORTS.

No. I.-JANUARY.

"Then came old Ianuary, wrapped well
In many weeds to keep the cold away;
Yet did he quake and quiver like to quell,

And blowe his nayles to warme them if he may;
For they were numbed with holding all the day
An hatchet keene, with which he felled wood,
And from the trees did lop the needlesse spray:
Upon an huge great earth-pot steane he stood
From whose wide mouth there flowed forth the Romane flood."
SPENSER.

READER, we undertake a hazardous task, the republication of waifs once committed to the surging ocean of periodical literature, in which full many a barque, launched with flaunting colours and swelling sails, has helplessly gone down; but the publishers have faith in our cockle-shell keeping afloat, and having gracefully asked us to take the helm, how can we refuse? So then let it be, and upon their heads be it. Not but that, with the usual vanity of the writing tribe, we are perfectly capable of swallowing any amount of praise, or of containing any amount of self-sufficiency in the soundness of our timbers and skill in steering; but verily the venture