24 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



awkward situation, for the women squatted them- 

 selves down beside his clothes. He swam round 

 and round for a while in the hope that their 

 curiosity would ere long be satisfied, and that they 

 would then return to their household duties. Not 

 a bit of it. The sight of a man performing the 

 part of a fish was far too entertaining a business 

 to be regarded with indifference, and they sat on 

 enchanted until he swam close in and told them to 

 go away. 



Mr. Fiddes, the minister, told me that the tem- 

 perature of the sea round St. Kilda is lower in 

 summer than in winter, on account of the icebergs 

 that become detached in Polar regions and drift 

 southwards into the Gulf Stream. He also in- 

 formed me that he was at that moment disproving 

 the assertions of horticulturists that strawberries 

 could not be grown in so high a latitude as that 

 in which he lived by producing the fruit in his 

 own garden. 



I leave horticulturists to crack this nut for 

 themselves, and hasten to present a much more 

 startling one for ornithologists from the same gen- 

 tleman. He told me in all good faith and sincerity 

 that Great Northern Divers make no nest at all, 

 but hatch their single egg under their wings, in 

 which position he had himself seen a bird carrying 

 one. 



Upon re-telling this astounding story to Mac- 

 kenzie his gillie overheard it, and afterwards told 

 me that the minister was quite right, as three 

 independent witnesses, including his own brother, 

 had, whilst sitting on the cliffs of Skye one Sunday 

 afternoon, witnessed a Great Northern Diver lay 

 her egg in the sea below them, and dive after and 

 catch it before it reached the bottom. On rising to 



