that we never see a little yellow face peeping out among the stones
... And the wild bucks have gone, and those days, and we are
here."--WALDO, in _The Story of an African Farm._


_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_


LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1893




INTRODUCTION.


The following treatise is to some extent a re-statement and partly an
amplification of a theory I have elsewhere advanced.[1] But as that
theory, although it has been advocated by several writers, especially
during the past half-century, is not familiar to everybody, some remarks
of an explanatory nature are necessary. And if this explanation assumes
a narrative form, not without a tinge of autobiography, it is because
this seems the most convenient way of stating the case.

It is now a dozen years or thereabouts since I first read the "Popular
Tales of the West Highlands," by Mr. J.F. Campbell, otherwise known by
his courtesy-title of "Campbell of Islay." Mr. Campbell was, as many