Mackenzie the bird-catcher, facile princeps the king and head of his order, called upon us to-day, and made us a present of the bonniest little redpole we ever set eyes upon. Its colouring is exquisitely beautiful, differing from the usual plumage of the species in having several little snow-white spots irregularly sprinkled over the coverts of either wing, and its neck and breast of a mingled shade of pink and crimson of exceeding richness, that makes it far and away the handsomest bird of the order we ever saw. At first we took it for a foreign bird, or a bird that had been artificially painted in order to deceive us, and it was only on handling and thoroughly examining him that we became convinced that the bird was a genuine, though curiously coloured, specimen of its species, and that we had it before us just as it was captured some days ago in Glentarbet, near Strontian. Of all our cage-birds, the redpole (Fringalla linaria, Linn.) is perhaps the soonest reconciled to loss of liberty and prolonged captivity. Our little pet, whose cage hangs almost within arm's length of us as we write, seems perfectly happy, and is already singing with all his might, a goldfinch in another cage beside him busily scolding him all the time for having the impudence to sing so well, or sing at all, in interruption of his own louder and clearer notes. Cage-birds properly treated are a great amusement, and, if you pay them due attention, evince in a very short time a degree of intelligence so remarkable that you only wonder, philosophising craniologically, how so much of it can find lodging-room within their little heads. Mackenzie is commissioned to go to Norway and Sweden this summer in search of a lot of crossbills, grossbeaks, and other birds, for a wealthy gentleman in the south, who is a great bird-fancier. Let him only once get to their habitat, and Mackenzie is just the man to lay salt on the tail of any bird that flies. CHAPTER LII. Tourist Grumblers; how to deal with them--Sea Fishing--Superstition about a Gull--Josephus--Story of Mosollam and the Augur.