1919 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 41 



sputtered out a jet of fire capable of lighting pipes in wind or rain; the head 

 was secured to the stick by wire-braid and retained its heat long after beino- 

 thrown away, as I discovered on a certain memorable occasion when I tried to 

 pick one up. It is told of my eldest sister that once as she toddled after my 

 father in his majestic course down the garden path, one of these newly spent 

 fusees thrown carelessly over his shoulder lodged on her neck and sizzled her 

 into an agony of shrill screams that must have rudely dispelled the smoker's 

 reverie. 



My father was very fond of flowers, fonder still of shrubs — lilac, syringa, 

 ribes, laburnum, laurel, cypress, golden yews and silver firs, but fondest of all 

 of rhododendrons : " Eoddy dandrums," so the mid Perthshire proverb flew, 

 " Roddy dandrums are the minister's maggot " — All procurable varieties from 

 white to wine-dark crimson flourished in the parsonage garden. 



It stands out "in my memory as clear as yesterday — so proud a day it must 

 have been — how my father took me along with him one evening for a walk past 

 some nursery gardens. Here he spotted a rhododendron a shade darker than any 

 he had; finding the nurseryman out, he scribbled a note for him and returned 

 with wheelbarrow and spade to the scene of the prize. The shrub was carefully 

 dug up, mounted on the vehicle, and carted exultantly away, the very barrow 

 calling aloud like a guinea fowl at every turn of the wheel; what a triumphal 

 procession that was ! I was still too small to help trundle the trophy home, but 

 like the fly on the wheel I thought myself the hero of the day. 



To grow these shrubs successfully, my father had cartloads of peat drawn 

 from the neighl)oring loch qi Ochtertyre. and every shrub was lowered into a great 

 pit and filled in with well-pressed peat. One day, I remember, my father came 

 in to lunch from the garden, and behold ! the large silver watch was gone from 

 his fob. Most of the afternoon was spent in undoing his morning's work, and 

 it was only after three or four rhododendrons had been dug up and their peat- 

 beds carefully sifted over that the watch was recovered. It still keeps good time, 

 and has been an inmate of my waistcoat pocket for more than thirty years now. 



Hitherto, I had been a rather solitary little mortal, but there now came 

 into my life a close companion and bosom friend. This was a brother nearly two 

 years older than I who came home at last from a prolonged visit to the south 

 coast of England, as the rigors of our Scotch climate had been too much for him 

 and he had been sent to the seaside in Sussex. He had stayed there so long 

 that at first coming among us he seemed lost in an alien world and nothing could 

 be found to comfort him. My panacea, to gather " wooden enemies " in the 

 Beech Wood, did seem for the moment to brighten him up, but when he found 

 the " wooden enemies " were only wind-flowers, and a walk to the Beech Wood 

 led up hill through trees to a stone quarry instead of down over sand to the 

 sea, his wrath and disappointment were greater than ever. After some weeks, 

 however, he grew reconciled, and as he made friends very readily, he and I were 

 soon as thick as thieves and always together. Our friendship was all the stronger 

 that we were of somewhat different natures ; like twin stars we helped to round 

 each other's lives out to a fuller sphere of wider orbit. An aunt of my father's 

 who stayed Avith us then, gave us nicknames that stuck for many a long day; 

 she called me " Merry Andrew," and my brother " Slyboots." We were both 

 of a height and could wear each other's clothes quite comfortably. As we were 

 always dressed alike, there were very few outside the family circle who could 

 tell us apart, and the less intimate half of our world supposed we were twins. 



4-E. 



