250 LOCH C RERAN. 



the choicest flower bulbs, being carefully gathered and 

 stored for the winter. To prevent the door being open 

 so as to invite entrance, a spring had been fastened upon 

 it lately, and next morning a buck was captured ; having 

 pushed its way in to find an invisible enemy close the 

 door behind it ! It had created quite a shindy in its 

 endeavours to get out, and had even sought to escape 

 through the window ! A buck in a bulb-house, with the 

 door shut, must be a close approximation to a bull in a 

 china shop. 



There is the light of the cottage blinking over the 

 port-bow, so we slip over the seaware bordering our little 

 stream, and soon beach our craft before our door, 

 satisfied that a cruise by moonlight is not at all a bad 

 substitute for a day excursion, and that beauties un- 

 imagined crowd upon the sight, and filter into the soul, 

 under the light of a frosty sky. 



DECEMBER, 1882. 



We had traversed the neighbouring stream a week ago 

 without seeing a single finny inhabitant, and again 

 yesterday we met our shrewdly-observing friend, and 

 asked him where the trout went to from our streams in 

 the winter ? To the sea ! was the reply ; and still un- 

 convinced we followed his stream from the seaweed 

 verge, poking under every stone, progging every bank 

 where, in the "merry, merry sunshine," the spotties 

 would flash and go in twos and threes. Not a fin shows 

 from bank or boulder, from rippling shallow or quiet 

 pool, and our search to-day corroborates our previous 

 hunt in the other stream, where equally the absence of 

 fibh was remarkable in lower and upper courses. Are 



