CH.VII.] BIRDS ON SCOTCH SEA-LOCHS. 233 



true to the tastes of their adopted country, and 

 seem rather to like it than otherwise. Tobacco- 

 smoke they do not like, and if you could manage 

 to keep a pipe constantly a-light, and your face 

 turned due to windward, you would hardly require 

 anything else. 



I remember a friend of mine one hot afternoon 

 in August passing by a tent which we had set up 

 in the hills on a moor in Ross-shire, and finding 

 a small boy, who had been left there to get dinner 

 ready, sitting in the burn which ran by it, with 

 only his head and hands above water, engaged in 

 plucking a duck (ducking and plucking alter- 

 nately), having been fairly hunted into it by the 

 midges. 



From the way in which some of the lochs on 

 the western coast of Scotland teem with animal 

 life in the way of sea and shell-fish, one would 

 naturally expect their shores to be tenanted in an 

 equal degree by the birds which ordinarily live 

 upon them. In this respect, however, I have been 

 somewhat disappointed, those which one finds 

 along the sides of such lochs being for the most 

 part confined to Curlews, Herons, Oyster-catchers 

 (which are, by the way, very good eating), and 

 Ring Dotterel, none of them often appearing in any 



