108 FIELD AND FERN. 



shorthorn are slowly but surely creeping. The sal- 

 mon fishing on the Spey was once let off, but it has 

 been now for fourteen years in the hands of the Duke 

 The seasons of 1862-63 were widely opposite in their 

 character, but the proceeds only differed by 20. 

 Last year the take was hardly two-thirds of an ave- 

 rage, but the great falling off was in the size of the 

 grilse, which seldom reached olbs. The fish are 

 brought from Tugnet in spring-carts, and so to 

 Eochabers station, and over the Highland line to 

 London within 24 hours of the net-haul. 



Shortly before the late Duke's death in 1860, a new 

 outlet was made to the Spey, but it did not just 

 chime in with the temper of this most rapid and un- 

 manageable of Scottish rivers, and taking a turn east- 

 ward, it all but cut away the fishing station at Tugnet. 

 Watching the progress of the works to defend the 

 village of Garmouth and its adjacent port of Kingston 

 gave his Grace almost a daily object for a four- 

 mile drive during his last summer at Gordon Castle. 

 When he had seen Tugnet, he would often go 

 and visit a small steading which he was putting up near 

 the railway station. The tenant only paid 8 a year ; 

 but he was an old Peninsular man, and there was the 

 great tie. Many and long were his cracks about old 

 times and comrades with Captain Fife, who has also 

 exchanged his sword for a ploughshare. His Grace 

 quite astonished another old " cannon-ball" of the dis- 

 strict, who did not know him by sight, when he asked 

 him to fetch his Sunday waistcoat with the medal on 



