184 FIELD NOTES FOR THE YEAR. 



Notwithstanding their wariness and the difficulty of 

 capturing them, seals are gradually diminishing in number, 

 and will soon, disappear from our coasts. This is owing 

 chiefly to the constant warfare carried on against them by 

 the salmon fishers, who either destroy them or frighten them 

 away as far as they can from their fishing stations. 



On the neck of land at which we have now arrived there 

 is a hut inhabited during the season by a couple of salmon 

 tishers, whose business it is to attend to the stake-net, which 

 stretches out from near their hut into the sea. A lonely life 

 these men must lead, from March to September, varied only 

 by visits from or to their comrades, who are stationed at the 

 depot of ice at Findhorn, where all the fish caught are sent 

 to be kept till a sufficient quantity is ready to load one of 

 their quick-sailing vessels .for London. But if their life is 

 lonely it is not idle, as the exposed situation of their nets 

 renders them liable to constant injury from wind and sea, 

 At every low tide the men scramble and wade to the end or 

 trap part of the net to take out the fish which have been 

 caught, and to scrape off the net the quantity of sea-weed 

 that has adhered to it. during the last tide. Although they 

 do not always find salmon, they are seldom so unlucky 

 as not to catch a number of goodly-sized flounders, which 

 fall to the share of the fishermen themselves; and perhaps 

 once or twice in the season a young seal gets entangled and 

 puzzled in the windings of the net, and is drowned in it. 

 More frequently, however, the twine is damaged and torn by 

 the larger seals, who are too strong and cunning to be so 

 easily caught. 



Frequently on this barren peninsula I have fallen in with 

 a small colony of field-rnice. They are in shape like the 

 common large-headed and short-tailed mouse, which is so 

 destructive in gardens, but of a brighter and lighter colour. 

 These little animals must live on the seeds of the bent and 

 on such dead fish as they may fall in with. 



The brent goose is not a constant visitor here in the 

 winter. This bird, though very numerous in the Cromarty 

 Firth, does not find in this part of the coast the particular 

 kind of sea-grass on which it feeds. There are generally, 

 however, a small company of these geese about the basin. A 

 few white-fronted geese are constantly here from October to 

 April or May, living either in the lonely mosses near the sea, 

 or about the sands. Of other wild geese we have no large 



