During the whole of his incumbency at Moffat, he was under the necessity of keeping house in Edinburgh, and enjoyed much the literary social parties, which if not more frequent in those days than after, were yet of a fashion somewhat different from those of later times. Lord Kames had his morning levees; Lord Monboddo, in imitation of the ancients, had his learned suppers; these he held once a fortnight during the sitting of the Session, and at them Dr. Walker was a frequent guest, along with Drs. Black, Hutton, and Hope. Even after his presentation to Colinton, Dr. Walker kept up his Edinburgh establishment, though he was oftener and longer a lodger at his manse, from its nearness to town and the attractions of a fine garden.

As might naturally have been expected, one great source of delightful amusement to the Doctor was horticulture; and both the gardens of Moffat manse and of Colinton bore ample testimony, in the rarity of their plants and the beauty of their arrangements, to his taste; but his successors in each, preferring the utile to the dulce, delved up the rarities, and planted, in their stead, turnip and carrot, kale and potatoes.

"Eheu! fugaces posthume posthunc

Labuntur horti!"

He married, late in life, Jane Wallace Wauchope, a sister of Mr. Wauchope of Niddry, who had also passed her meridian. For many years Mrs. Walker was in good health, and added much to the Doctor's enjoyment of life; at a late period, she was afflicted

D

with a long indisposition, from which she had not recovered when he died; while he, for several years, suffered under total blindness, superinduced by that not uncommon yet most pernicious practice of preferring to study by candle-light, and after the fatigues of the day, instead of enjoying the beams of the morning and labouring after the night's repose. "Yet," adds Lord Woodhouselee, "though thus deprived of the principal source of his enjoyments, and deeply suffering from domestic misfortune, the blessings of a well-regulated mind, an equal temper, a happy flow of animal spirits, and a memory rich in knowledge and stored with amusing anecdotes, not only rendered his conversation delightful to his friends, but supplied the means and power of still occupying his time with his favourite literary and scientific pursuits." He died on the 22d of January 1804, aged seventy-three.

While he was laid aside, his place was ably supplied by the present Professor Jameson, who has raised the reputation of the chair to a height which overshadows the well-earned reputation of his predecessor; but whose fame is secured by more lasting memorials than the mere delivery of lectures could confer. After his death, a volume of Tracts was published, which, together with his "Travels in the Hebrides," his " Heads of Lectures," and his essays in the Royal Transactions, are all that remain to keep alive his remembrance.

RASORES AND GRALLATORES.

INTRODUCTION.

"Ces oiseaux (gallinacés) méritent cependent bien plus notre attention, si nous envisageons sous le rapport de l'utilité et des jouissances que nous serions à même d'en retirer ce n'est qu'a l'insouciance qui nous est si naturelle, qu'on doit reprocher de n'avoir pas dès longtemps mis en œuvre les moyens nècessaires pour nous rendre familiers des êtres qui, en s'accoutoutumant a l'homme auroient continué de vivre sous son domaine, et lui seroient devenus de la premierè utilité."-TEMMINCK.

"In exploring the tract which leads us, step by step, to an acquaintance with them (grallatores), we must travel through reeds and rushes, with doubtful feet, over the moss-covered, faithless quagmire, amidst oozing rills and stagnant pools."-BEWICK.

Incapable of that perfection in swimming which is developed in the next order, the Waders may be termed Marine Rasores, or Fowls of the Sea. They are always walking on its shores, or on the sides of its fresh waters; and they depend as much upon their ambulations, for seeking sustenance, as upon their wings, for those long expeditions they are known to make."-SWAINSON.

THE Rasorial order of birds in the British Islands, contains a number of species so limited, that it has been necessary, in the present volume, to join with it the history of the Grallatores or Waders. The direct importance of the first to man, whether in a wild or in their reclaimed and cultivated state, is greater than that of any of

the other divisions; almost all of them are available as a delicate and nutritious food, and the facility of their domestication and introduction from one climate to another, the ease with which they seem to be able to accommodate themselves to change of temperature or situation, afford additional proofs of the wise adaptation of structure to the wants of the species, or for the purposes which they were intended to fill in the arrangements of nature.

Continents containing an immense extent of forest and of dense cover, or stretching out into unbounded plains, are necessary for their abundance; and in all the great lands of our globe, we shall find analogous forms marked out for their respective localities. In the islands, the supply becomes naturally limited according to their extent; and it should be recollected, that here the native inhabitants have their maintenance supplied from the seas, in proportion as the ruminating animals and rasorial birds are wanting to the land. In Europe and Western Asia we find the least proportion, the families there being now confined to the Tetraonide or grouse, the bustards, and a limited number of pigeons. It may be remarked, at the same time, that these countries have been longer in a continued state of progressive civilization than any others, and that in them the greatest advantages have been taken of the capabilities which the foreign species afforded of being naturalised, every other continent having been laid

under contribution for the luxury and refinement of this partial territory, as the fowls, turkeys, peacocks, and pintadoes, of the most ordinary farm and poultry yards will at all times show. Africa may be stated as next in scarcity, and her arid plains are most suitable to the Struthionidæ, the noble ostrich, and numerous bustards, exhibiting its rasorial character, accompanied by a peculiar form of partridges, and the genus Pterocles, or sand-grouse, while the guinea fowls seem to be the arboreal form, and frequent the lines of wood and cover which fringe the borders of the streams and rivers; but in this remarkable country we see every deficiency in this family of birds, as a mean of sustenance, more than compensated by the innumerable herds of ruminating quadrupeds, particularly antelopes, which are followed after and fed upon by the wandering hordes. It is in Central Asia and North America, with the northern half of the Southern Continent, that we find the great stronghold of the typical Rasores. In the former, we have the stock of our domestic poultry, the splendid pheasants and gorgeous peacocks, all so successfully introduced to Europe, besides bustards, numerous partridges, and pigeons, and the cassowary, or the Asiatic representation of the ostrich. To North America we are indebted for the turkey, and it possesses many species of grouse, in size, with a single exception, generally exceeding those of Europe. In the Southern Continent we encounter the whole family of the Cra