66 A HUNDKED YEAKS 



behind tlie Tigh Dige. The last kite had disappeared 

 before my time. There were plenty of pine-martens and 

 polecats and some badgers even in my young days. 

 My mother used to have an average of forty or fifty 

 skins of martens brought to her by the keepers every 

 year, of which she made the most lovely sable capes and 

 coats for her sisters and lady friends. The pine martens, 

 the polecats, and the badgers are all quite extinct with 

 us now, but they were all still in existence when I bought 

 Inverewe. 



My uncle in his Notes says that when he was a lad 

 the Magnum Bonum plums were being raided from off 

 the south wall of the Tigh Dige garden, and to try and 

 guard them the gardener covered the tree with several 

 folds of herring-net. On the following morning what 

 did my uncle see struggling in the net but a big marten, 

 which he shot. Its inside was found packed full of the 

 yellow plums, but it was clever enough to avoid swallow- 

 ing the stones, which were found in heaps on the top of 

 the wall. 



I was stalking when a boy of sixteen on the steep 

 braes above Loch Langabhat in the deer forest of 

 Morsgail, in the Lews, and as I was crawling along on 

 my hands and knees I saw in front of me, jammed up 

 against a low gravel bank, a dead sheep. It happened 

 that owing to the formation of the ground my keeper 

 and I and the Morsgail stalker were able to raise ourselves 

 to standing position without spoiling the stalk, and on 

 turning over the sheep what should we find under it but 

 a large marten squashed pretty flat. We understood 

 at once what had happened. The marten had pinned 



