A FAMOUS DOG. 279 



twenty years ago (Eheu! fugaccs .labuntur anni\ we had a large 

 Labrador dog, a present, when a three-months-old pup, from one of 

 the best and kindliest men we have ever known, the late Rev. Dr. 

 Macnair, of the Abbey Church, Paisley. He grew to be a mag- 

 nificent animal, the largest and most powerful dog, perhaps, ever 

 seen in the Highlands, and as sagacious and good-tempered as he was 

 big and bold and strong. The late Mr. Campbell of Monzie, an 

 excellent judge of dogs, used to say that he was the finest dog he 

 ever saw, and made it a point every year to call once or twice 

 during the shooting season purposely to have " a friendly talk," as 

 he termed it, with " Albert," for such was our canny Goliath's 

 name. As a water-dog, he was simply perfect, as amphibious 

 almost as a seal. Any stone that you took in your hand and threw 

 into twelve, fifteen, or even twenty feet of water, he instantly 

 dashed after, and took from the bottom, and laid at your feet, 

 seldom making a mistake, though how he was able to select from a 

 stony bottom the very stone that had been handled and thrown in 

 by you was then, and is still, a puzzle to us : not by scent, one 

 would think, for all traces of contact with the hand must surely 

 have been lost in passing through such a depth of salt water. He 

 probably was able to recognise the proper stone partly from its 

 colour and shape, and from its being in a less saturated state, and 

 less in contact with the bottom than were those that always lay 

 there. On one occasion we had left our boat on the beach, neglect- 

 ing to tie the painter, as we intended returning immediately. 

 Something came in the way, however, that occupied us longer than 

 we expected, and on returning to the shore, our boat was off and 

 away, drifting before a land breeze that had already carried it quite 

 aifquarter of a mile from the beach. There was no other boat at 

 hand in which to overtake the runaway, and to go round by the 

 ferry, to meet it on the opposite side of the loch, was a longer 

 walk than one cared about just then, and the boat, besides, was 



