362 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



pieces were only worth keeping when all together made 



up an entire belemnite. I have taught old the 



same lesson I know not how often, yet he persisted in 

 bringing me the detached fragments notwithstanding. 

 Lamb's joke had some truth in it after all. Boys in the 

 main are superior to frivolous members of parliament. 

 " What church," I asked my boy, " does your father go 

 to?" "Oh, the church that's put out," he replied; 

 " none go to the other churches here but the Duke's 

 people." On coming home I made him happy with a 

 shilling and a drink of ale/ 



' Brora, Tuesday evening. 



1 Here I am after a walk of about ten miles along 

 the coast. The day was warm, and my path or rather 

 no-path lay for the greater part of the distance over 

 loose sand, but exercise and a reinvigorated stomach are 

 already beginning to tell in my favour ; and so here I 

 am, after an additional spell among the rocks between 

 dinner and tea-time, a fresh active fellow at your service. 

 The Brora, a dark mossy stream, runs at the back of 

 the inn here, between precipitous banks ; it abounds in 

 fine small trout that were leaping so thick and looking 

 so happy this evening that I became quite sentimental 

 in looking at them, and formed the romantic notion of 

 eating a few of them with pepper and vinegar just that 

 I might be happy too. Accordingly at tea I got the 

 idea realized into an act, and found it, but you won't 

 believe me, a good workable idea, notwithstanding its 

 mixture of romance. 



' Brora is a loose straggling village, with too many 

 people in it for all they have to do, and there are num- 

 bers of miserable-looking cottages between it and the 

 hills, whose inmates are too palpably in the same con- 

 dition. One of its peculiar features is the river. In 



