88 LOCH C RERAN. 



followed next day, along with a marked change of tem- 

 perature now that the stars are out. 



The thunderstorm was overhead for a time, but kept to 

 the hills, and passed on between us and Cruachan towards 

 Glencoe. Despite the assault we still stumbled along to- 

 wards the Ledaig beach, but before we reached it the 

 gloom of the weather was creeping into the gloaming of 

 these short days, and we could only spend a few minutes 

 on the strand, listening to the rolling and the rattling of 

 the small boulders, as they were tossed about in the 

 mighty swing of the breakers. How they played with the 

 beach, and swirled the boulders into cairns, while the rest- 

 less sea made its bed for the winter, and threw ashore in 

 heaps knee-deep the rich masses of discarded bedding. 



Looking out on the masses of furious living waters, we 

 decided that now was an opportunity for obtaining a 

 supply of large specimens of Helcion pelhicida, the 

 beautiful streaked limpet-like shell fish that haunts and 

 subsists upon the tangle (palmatus), so to-morrow we deter- 

 mined to pay a morning visit, and meantime, in the 

 waning light, drew out two large tangle stems from the 

 mass of seaware, and made homeward. After a rough 

 transit, on examination one of them proved to have a 

 specimen of the desired little mollusc well buried, shell 

 and all, in the stem while it is something remarkable 

 that next morning, after two hours' careful examination 

 of hundreds of stems, we did not find another specimen ! 

 So that our shot at a venture in the dark might have fairly 

 and reasonably misled us into supposing we had merely 

 to go and pick up a stem to find the mollusc in question. 



Now, we had a definite and distinct object besides the 

 mere gathering of specimens of what, although pretty 

 enough, is by no means a rare shell, and that was the 



