The Scotch Colley. 197 



pitiless storm," to bravely face the snow-drift and the sleet throngh 

 heather and moss hag, in tentie care of 



the ourie cattle, 

 Or silly sheep that hide the brattle 



O' winter war; 

 And through the drift deep lairing sprattle, 



Beneath a scaur. 



I quote from memory, and therefore not literally, but I believe it was 

 "Idstone," in one of the charming papers he used to contribute to the 

 " Field," who told the story of the Scotch shepherd on the hill side fall- 

 ing in love with his Gordon setters, and saying he would " like a cross 

 o' yin o' them wi' his colley, for they would throw unco braw whalps." 

 Oh ! " Idstone !" " Idstone !" how could you let my countryman draw 

 the white feather over your eyes so ? The " pawky auld carle ' ' had ulterior 

 designs on your whisky flask, and was not unmindful of the proverb, 

 " Love me, love my dog ;" but a shepherd who would make such a pro- 

 position in earnest is not fit to take care of a hirsel. 



Further, in reference to this question of colour, I, for my part, put 

 aside, as purely fanciful and with facts all agains t them, the opinions 

 given in both the earlier and the last edition of " Dogs of the British 

 Islands." In the former I find it stated the colou rs are various, " some- 

 times sandy or of various mixed greys, some of which are singularly 

 beautiful and picturesque. There is generally a very fine white line 

 down the forehead, not amounting to a blaze as in the spaniel." 



Who wrote the article on colleys in the first edition I do not know, 

 but feel certain it was not "Stonehenge," for he could not by any 

 possible slip conceivable to me be guilty of the absurdities with which it 

 abounds to wit, the following quotations, the statements in which were 

 gravely made in a book for many years the standard work on dogs, given as 

 information to the British public, and not as jokes, ponderous as they 

 would have been: "Their [the colleys] homing faculty is very extra- 

 ordinary, and it has been asserted that the Scottish drovers would send 

 them back alone from Smithfield to the Highlands with a wave of the 

 hand." Would that the Ettrick Shepherd and Kit North had read the above 

 together we should have had an additional chapter in the Noctes. 

 Again we have the following evidence of hearsay usurping the practical : 

 41 If a dog is of a marked intelligence, he may even be trusted to lie upon 



