"the scenery in Loch Linnhe is magnificent--such beautiful mountains." A specimen of a very rare bird, shot by the keeper in Ardgour Garden a few days ago, has been kindly sent to us by Mr. Maclean. It turns out to be a male in beautiful plumage of the turtle-dove (Columba turtur, Linn.; La tourterelle of Buffon), a bird rarely seen anywhere in Scotland, and which, except in this instance, has never, so far as we are aware, been met with in the West Highlands. We remember seeing a young bird, a female in immature plumage, that was said to have been shot somewhere near Falkland Palace in the summer of 1847, from which it was reasonably concluded that a pair of these beautiful birds had in that year at least nidified and reared their young somewhere in the Howe of Fife. Except in the case of the specimen now before us, we are not aware that it has ever been met with anywhere in the north or north-western counties. The turtle is, as we have said, an exceedingly beautiful and handsome bird, the breast of a delicate vinaceous tint, and a black patch on either side of the neck, each feather of which is tipped with a crescent of pure white, giving it a very elegant and striking appearance. It is less bulky and less rotund in form than the common dove, its shape more nearly resembling that of the blue jay or throstle cock, which latter it also about equals in size. We have never seen this bird in confinement, but it is said to exhibit a remarkable degree of tenderness and sagacity, whether as a cage or chamber bird. On the Continent it is kept not only for its tameness and beauty, but because it is a common belief among the people that it attracts to itself bad humours, and is to a family in the matter of diseases what a lightning-rod is to a building in a thunderstorm. Bechstein, a shrewd and intelligent man, seems to think that the belief in question, absurd as it may appear to us, is not so ill-founded after all, for he says quietly, "Thus much at least is certain, that during the illness of men it readily becomes sickly." The explanation probably is that, being a tender and delicate bird, the odour and effluvia attendant on certain human ailments affects it as described. Other birds are occasionally similarly affected; thus, when our own children were laid up with a very bad kind of scarlatina, our cage-birds, gold and green finches, were out of sorts for some time, drooping and dejected and unable to sing as usual, though the month was April, when they should have been in all respects at their best and in full and free song. You may be sure, by the way, that we were not a little pleased with a paragraph which appeared the other day about the male cockatoo that dropped the egg, very much, no doubt, to the astonishment of his amiable mistress. When some years ago we ventured to assert that males of various birds, notably the common domestic cock, sometimes dropped an egg, the thing was scouted as