246 FIELD AND FERN. 



coasts,, as well as on the Earn and Tay, and his 

 rent for the present season is considerably above 

 9,OQO. The Fife chain of stations begins at the 

 bend beyond Drumley, and goes down nearly to St. 

 Andrews. The stations are on the Muir, three or 

 four hundred yards from the shore, and at each of 

 them he keeps an overseer and four men. The old 

 building with the low door, the earth and heather on 

 the top, and a load of boxes with cord handles in a 

 pile beside it, looks like a cave of stalactites when 

 you first enter. Then as the light breaks in, a great 

 cock-salmon's beak or grilse's head is found pro- 

 truding from the rough ice ; and when the overseer 

 looks at his book, you may hear that " 96 salmon 

 and grilse were taken yesterday." They had just 

 taken something more than they expected in a shark, 

 which had three brace of young ones swimming after 

 her, and she whelped ten brace more on the grass 

 before she died. She would have made the fortune 

 of a caravan, but there she lay neglected among the 

 sedge, with her green back and pale-slate belly, and 

 all the little things around her ; and her captors only 

 remarked that she had a three-year-old mouth and a 

 sand-paper hide. 



Trying the nets was the sight of the day. The 

 man climbs along the side rope, and takes the fish 

 out of chamber after chamber, and slips his cord 

 through the gills, and at last he descends from his 

 perch, and wades out, dragging after him a regular 

 bouquet of all weights from 40 to 5 Ibs. Sometimes 



