FEBRUARY, 1883. 275 



wild fallow deer seem to have developed that contempt 

 of humanity and its devices born of familiarity. 



This is the first evening since Saturday last that we 

 can be said to have anything like calm, and the room, 

 as we light the lamp and draw down the blind, seems 

 deathly still, so accustomed has the ear become to the 

 continuous howl of the tempest. But the gales we have 

 just found relief from, for the time, would be better 

 described as a succession of terrific squalls, with strange 

 unexpected lulls between. We do not suppose they are 

 yet over, as our ducks were flying this evening like wild 

 mallards to and from the stream in front. 



Saturday was a reasonable day, and as our dredge had 

 lain idle for exactly a month, we resolved to have an 

 hour on the water at the scallop ground. It seems fairly 

 reasonable to conclude that these pectens are migratory, 

 like the larger P. Maximus, for we had been at work 

 but a short time when we had secured a plentiful supply, 

 although of late our success has been by no means 

 satisfactory. We are tossing aside the empty shells with 

 still an eye on possibilities, when we catch sight of a 

 something at the bottom of a half valve of rough scallop 

 (P. pusio). Empty shells, exactly speaking, unless but 

 lately tenanted, are rarely to be found, as mud, sand, or 

 gravel gets silted into them, or a sea annelid will have 

 built its tube of sand or broken shells neatly coiled 

 therein. So, amid a mass of debris, it is not peculiar to 

 find a rough, dirty looking object in a half shell. But 

 the eye becomes educated in a peculiar way, and it is 

 wonderful how little of interest or novelty will escape one 

 even in a hasty glance through a mass of " stuff," and 

 thus it is that a fine Fissurella Graeca, or keyhole limpet, 



