8 Spring 



cattle to drink at, there is an enormous trout a trout 

 at least four inches long ! which hitherto has foiled 

 the rarest ' guddler,' with loaches under the stones, 

 and young eels like living horse-hairs, and water- 

 spiders with air-bubbles, and caddis-worms trailing 

 their houses with them. Birds-nesting would be 

 altogether forgotten but that an exploration of the 

 archway hardly bigger than a fox's earth discovers 

 one of the most beautiful of bird's houses, the spheri- 

 cal mansion of moss and lichen woven by the tiny 

 4 Kitty ma wren ' and perfectly harmonised with the 

 ruining wall. She flits to and fro, cheeping with 

 her thin voice in a superfluity of agitation, for her 

 eight or nine white-and-pale-red-spotted eggs are safe 

 from the rudest hands. Then it is natural to follow 

 a burn, and we go tracing this one. At the meadow, 

 where the fresh green spears of grass are warring with 

 the brown ones of last summer, a heron slowly rises 

 with a fish in his mouth and makes off to the great 

 wood on the other bank of the river. What if his 

 nest be there ? True, the heronry is far away among 

 the hills, in a plantation rising from the bank of a 

 trout-stream ; but here it is common enough for a 

 stray couple to build on the highest oaks or the taller 

 fir-trees. If you want to know why circumspice \ 

 Not only is the brook well stocked with fry, but the 

 river close at hand broadens over areas of yellow sand 

 and gravel, and the rushing stream leaves scores of 

 pools behind it, and there is no house within call, and 



