286 LOCH C RE RAN. 



up a gravel beach must struggle along without halt or 

 hesitation over the great shoal, as we drag the boat sea- 

 wards ; and only after half-an-hour at the galley do we 

 thrust our craft on the outer waters, and hop on board 

 shivering for a dram, as we endeavour externally and 

 internally to bring back life and vigour into benumbed 

 extremities. Over this great extent of sandy, muddy, 

 semi-gravelly shoal we did not start a single flat-fish, so 

 that they must have anticipated the rapidly approaching 

 ebb and fled seaward, although until this last week such 

 an ebb tide had not visited the Doirlinn flounders for 

 six months, perhaps not for years. 



Quite a demand now arose for the oars in our spin 

 across to the Black Island, where we soon beached our 

 craft and started to explore its nooks and rocky caves at 

 low ebb tide. It proved to be remarkably bare, as if the 

 great and continued gales had swept it as they have 

 swept all other exposed quarters. Just at the verge of 

 lowest ebb, however, we come upon first one then 

 another Montague Sucker Fish, until we have in all 

 about half a dozen, between the island and its outlying 

 reef of rocks. Its congener the Cornish Sucker also sup- 

 plied a few specimens, but none of the two-spotted 

 Suckers showed themselves ; and thus our find proved 

 that this fish (Liparis Montagui\ so rarely found in the 

 West of Scotland, is comparatively common in its chosen 

 haunts. The scarcity of the Cornish Sucker here was 

 the more remarkable, as the very next day we came upon 

 a pair of these droll suckers, with their great flat heads, 

 under almost every stone we lifted on a stretch of rough 

 boulder-clad foreshore on Loch Creran. Sometimes 

 three or four were under one stone, and we must have 

 seen at least a hundred during a stroll of a couple of 



