IN THE HIGHLANDS 47 



border were his own. It never occurred to the old 

 innocent to imagine that his son had put on his shoes 

 while he was at tea, and thus safely supped on apricots 

 and peaches, without any risk of the footmarks betraying 

 the thief." 



Before bringing to an end this talk about our changed 

 climate I shall give one more proof of it — viz., the 

 almost entire disappearance of the wild bee. 



I often heard, when I was young, that in the Lews 

 (whose poetical name in Gaelic is Eilean an Fhraoicb 

 (the Heather Island) bees were so plentiful in the olden 

 times that the boys were able to collect large quantities 

 of wild honey, which, by applying heat to it, was run 

 into glass bottles and sold at the Stornoway markets. 

 Hunting for wild-bees' nests was one of the great plays 

 for the boys in the autumns, but nowadays this amuse- 

 ment is never thought of. Even in the sixties my good 

 and faithful grieve John Grant, when at the head of his 

 squad (long before mowing machines were ever thought 

 of), used to be quite annoyed at the continual hindrance 

 to the scythe work through men stopping to raid bees' 

 nests in the grass, and losing time in eating the honey 

 and the ceir (bee-bread), and pretending they could not 

 go back to their work owing to the attacks of the in- 

 furiated bees ! Nowadays, even if one by any chance 

 comes upon a wild-bees' nest, it contains little or nothing 

 in the way of honey. My old sheep manager, Alexander 

 Cameron, better known to his many friends as the 

 Tournaig Bard on account of his being such a good 

 Gaelic poet and improvisatore, owned a collie dog in 



