302 LOCH CRERAtf. 



crime, and the heinous character thereof. " No more 

 kill the chicken " will be the verdict, no doubt, as pussy 

 has had her lesson, you say. Quite a mistake, however ; 

 she has learned a great deal more than this, for she soon 

 returned with another chicken alive in her mouth from a 

 distant quarter, not only returning it to the yard, but 

 taking it to the very hen from which the other was 

 removed. 



It is seldom we see a lobster in the seas around us, 

 and yet they must be by no means scarce in some 

 quarters, more especially on the rocky Kingairloch coast. 

 A friend informs us they are like many animals of 

 terrestrial habit in their fondness for certain corners; 

 just as a bird will keep year after year to the same nest- 

 ing place, and if it is killed another takes its place in 

 all probability that having been the cradle of the new- 

 comer. Again, every sportsman knows that year after 

 year he may kill his bird or his hare about the same 

 corner, and so it is with lobsters. Our informant assures 

 us he has taken a lobster of large size at law spring tide 

 year after year from the same snug rocky cleft ; and this 

 either means that the place appeals to the home instinct 

 of the lobster kind, who will not permit it to remain 

 unoccupied, or else that some of the progeny of the 

 former occupants are about, waiting to slip into the 

 home of their infancy. At anyrate, there must be a 

 considerable number of these Crustacea about the 

 neighbouring waters, and our alter ego writes us that a 

 goodly specimen of the cod kind brought news of a 

 lobster-inhabited neighbourhood last week. For upon 

 inquiring at the well-filled fish he was found to be as 

 garrulous as Tennyson's Oak, and not only explained 

 what he delighted to subsist upon, but displayed three 



