no Summer 



to take to their heels. It is the constant aim of the 

 proprietor to have as few of these stampedes as pos- 

 sible ; for, as the cattle breed all the year round, such 

 alarums and excursions prove fatal to more calves 

 than it is easy to estimate ; and the breeding of so 

 large an animal in wildness is at the best attended 

 with much danger and difficulty. To see them to 

 advantage therefore it is advisable to go alone or with 

 a single companion. And no time can be better than 

 when the clouds above Trickley Wood are reddening 

 with the sunset. Then, as one white form after 

 another is seen emerging from the wood, trampling 

 the fern, cropping the herbage, and biting at the low 

 branches, it is possible to realise what this part of the 

 country must have been like when the deer and cattle 

 had the great forest of Cheviot to roam in, and when 

 all the land between Wooler and Millfield was one sea 

 of yellow broom. 



A SUMMER IDYL 



AMONG the inhabitants of our lakes and rivers, I do 

 not believe there is a greater fraud and disappoint- 

 ment than the pike. Other fish have a character and 

 ideal, and live up to them ; he is only trustworthy in 

 so far as that he is certain to disappoint expectation, 

 to be shy when he should be ravenous and ravenous 

 when he should be shy. That is not the opinion of 

 expert anglers, or of those who write books on fishing ; 



