CHAPTER XIII. 



Extraordinary Heat and Drought Plentifulness of Fungi Cows fond of Mushrooms 

 Shoals of Whales A rippling Breeze, and a Sail on Loch Leven. 



IP of late we had to admit somewhat reluctantly be it con- 

 fessed that it was " wet, very wet," even for Lochaber, we have 

 it in our power now at length [1st August 1870] to strike a 

 different key-note, and to say that it is dry, very dry ; bright, very 

 bright ; hot, very hot, so dry, bright, and hot, in fact, that one 

 might as well be on the banks of the Nile or Niger as on the 

 shores of Loch Leven, were it not for a delightful sea breeze that 

 never fails to come to cheer and gladden us evening and morning ; 

 and then you may fancy that is, if you can swim, dear reader 

 the unspeakable delight of a headlong plunge into the cool and 

 sparkling waters of the advancing tide ! The heat is in truth some- 

 thing extraordinary, and if it weren't that you felt yourself fast 

 retrograding into the same condition, it would be an amusing study 

 to watch a certain class of people, generally the most staid and stiff 

 and correct possible, who, as a rule, would rather die than violate 

 the least of the proprieties, now going about in a semi-nude state, 

 as if they had just escaped from a lunatic asylum, panting the while 

 as if they were in the last stage of asthma, and streaming with 

 perspiration as if they had resolutely made up their minds to melt 

 away and dissolve like untimely snowballs. 



Crops everywhere are splendid, and, after all the rain of the 

 earlier part of the season, which gave them growth, this is just the 

 weather that suits them in their present stage, strengthening and 

 consolidating their tissues, and bringing them to a rapid and healthy 



