144 LOCH C RE RAN. 



exceptional tide may have induced the smaller mammalia 

 to emulate the larger, and have a constitutional feed 

 among the marine herbage. How conspicuous the 

 creature was even at that great distance, and how its 

 natural protection in an ordinary winter betrayed it when 

 thus exposed to our mild season. 



The rooks, it seems, have really been betrayed into 

 commencing operations a fortnight ago in our neighbour- 

 hood, and quite little heaps of sticks are growing on the 

 trees. The last three days' gale stopped their labours, 

 but this morning they are again busy; so the great 

 bunches of primroses, the yellow daffodils, the bushes of 

 flowering currants gay with strong-scented flowers, with 

 the apple-blossom showing in some corners, and all the 

 gooseberry bushes getting green, have started these wise 

 birds, despite their ordinary almanac. We wonder if that 

 sparrow's nest on the side of the public road, evidently 

 already filling, had anything to do with it ? The rooks 

 are so much earlier than all small birds that they must 

 first have grown bewildered, then ashamed of their 

 delay, and finally aggravated at the impertinent sparrow's 

 progress, and rushed, regardless of consequences, into 

 the matrimonial market and the building trade. 



Well ! a tortoise is nothing to you. We have had you 

 for a week at least, and you have not succeeded in walk- 

 ing round the tumbler. Pycnogonum liltorale they call 

 you, too, and of all living creatures with which the 

 ordinary world is best acquainted you resemble the active, 

 industrious, self-reliant, and determined spider. It is, 

 however, only in a very superficial way that you bear any 

 likeness to an insect, for you are really a crustacean of 

 sedentary habit parasitic upon cetacea, say the best 

 authorities. Now, where the cetacean came from or 



