264 SALMON AND TROUT. 



marvel and mystery his avocation gives him no common op- 

 portunities for observing some of the most beautiful and curious 

 forms of animal and vegetable life. Stealing along by the water's 

 edge, his footfall lost in the murmur of the stream, or muffled 

 by Nature's carpeting, he enters unsuspected the haunts of the 

 shyest creatures. He sees the otter glide down from his cairn, 

 or lift his sleek treacherous visage in the midst of the pool ; he 

 notes the general consternation of the salmonidae at the sinuous 

 rush of the seal, whom hungry pursuit has tempted beyond the 

 salt water ; ' doe and roe and red deer good ' slake their thirst 

 in his sight ; he surprises the blackcock's deserted mate and 

 progeny in their moist dingle, the wild duck and her brood as 

 they paddle through the sedges. Leaning back against the 

 trunk of a willow, he sees the kingfisher, a living sapphire, 

 shoot close to his dazzled eyes, or from her perch over his head 

 drop on a sudden plumb into the river, and as suddenly emerge 

 with her prey ; or hidden in the shadow of an overhanging 

 rock, he marks the water ouzel, glittering in a silver panoply of 

 air bubbles, run briskly along the sandy bottom of the burn. 

 Even the innocent gambols of the much-calumniated water rat, 

 joyous after his guiltless feast of grass and water weeds, or the 

 familiar wiles of the nesting peewit will find him not an un- 

 amused spectator. If a botanist, he will pick his choicest ferns 

 in the damp rocky hollows by the waterfall, his rarest lichens on 

 the bare slopes above some Alpine tarn, his favourite orchises 

 in the meadows watered by a well-peopled stream. He will 

 rejoice in the delicate beauty of the pinguicula along some 

 tiny moorland runnel, and admire the silver-fringed stars of the 

 bog-bean beside deeper and blacker waters, where the quaking 

 turf craves wary walking. Mr. Balfour's utmost indulgence 

 would hardly admit me to a degree in botany, yet it was with a 

 glow of pleasure that I first found myself throat- deep in a bed 

 of the Osmunda regalis, on the banks of the Leven, or gathered 

 the * pale and azure-pencilled ' clusters of the wood-vetch by 

 Greta-side, or discovered the fringed 1 yellow water lily on the 



1 Villarsia nymphceoidcs. 



