aiuouiit of mischief anion^' trout in a preserve, yet lie is easily scared. 

 His favourite food, when he can got it, seems to be the eel. I have 

 known a heronry adjoining a trout stream, but I never heard any par- 

 ticular complaints ; and on examining underneath the trees where they 

 nested, I never found more than the remains of eels. This is not to say 

 that he would not clear a jjond of gold fish at a single morning's meal, as 

 he has been known to do when getting the chance. At the same time, he 

 is a bird which I trust may long be an ornament to our waters, and not 

 ruthlessly shot, in season and out of season, by every fellow with a gun, 

 because he is a big bird and affords an easy shot. The Lapwing, which 

 comes next, tliough widely dispersed over the country, is nowhere so 

 abundant as formerly, especially on the estuary and its immediate neigh- 

 bourhood, where, forty or fifty years ago, on the banks, as also on the 

 adjoining tields in autumn and early winter, it was to be seen in flocks 

 of many hundreds. In the consiunption of slugs, particularly on the 

 strong clay lands of the Carse of Gowrie, their presence was most bene- 

 ficial, so much so, thai since their great diminution, I have known in 

 some of tlie late wet seasons whole fields of autumn wheat after beans, 

 so utterly destroyed by slug, that they have had to be resown with some 

 other grain in the following spring ; and this I attribute entirely to the 

 absence of the Peesweep or Toughet, as it was commonly called in 

 those days. The decrease of these birds I think inay be traced 

 to three causes. First, and mainly, from the presence on our 

 ■waters of punt gunners, which dates back to somewhere between the 

 years 18.30 and 1840, before which time they were unknown. Driven 

 ofi' from the Fens of Lincolnshire, which had then begun to be drained, 

 several English fowlers made their appearance, with their punts and 

 heavy swivel guns, weighing, some of them, as much as 200 lbs., carry- 

 ing a charge from one to two pounds of shot, according to size, and 

 making sad havoc among the Wild Geese and various kinds of Wild 

 Duck which then abounded ; but as these began to lessen in number, 

 and the survivors to become cautious, and more diflicidt to obtain, 

 many a heavy shot was made instead among the unsuspecting Peewits, 

 when lingering on some spit still uncovered by the rising tide, hundreds 

 of which during a season were killed, and sold to the dealers for what 

 would now be considered a mere trifle — if I recollect right, fourpence a 

 pair. The Englishmen have long since gone, but not the punts or 

 canoes, as I believe they are now called. Increased twenty to thirty-fold, 

 they are in the season continually to be seen here and there, stealthily 

 gliding out from behind some thicket of reeds, or silently, and, to the 

 l)irds mvisibly, creeping through some of the deeper channels along the 

 banks, so get within shot. The present canoe being smaller in size, as 



