OCTOBER 189 



LXXIII 



From bees to donkeys involves a long step in 

 zoology, nor is it often that a donkey is such an ass 

 as to interfere with bees ; nevertheless, bees B ees and 

 were lately (1895) the agents in producing Donke y s 

 one of two spectacles which, it used to be said, nobody 

 had ever seen a dead donkey or a dead postboy. At 

 Culmalzie, in Wigtownshire, a young donkey, got 

 into a blacksmith's garden and overturned two hives. 

 The evicted tenantry immediately swarmed over the 

 unlucky animal and stung him to death. Its body 

 swelled to an enormous size. 



LXXIV 



One donkey, at least, has made itself famous in 

 Scottish history. Probably no part of Scotland enjoys 

 such a charming climate, year in and year cawdor 

 out, as the broad wedge of champaign lying Castle 

 between where Findhorn, on the east, rolls his dark 

 flood from the Monadh Lia, and, on the west, the 

 miniature salmon-river Nairn hurries to the Moray 

 Firth. The mild, yet bright and bracing air, is such 

 as those who have not proved the merits of Nairn as 

 a sanatorium can scarcely reconcile with the latitude. 

 This fertile strath, lying between the brown front of 

 Carn-nan-tri-tighearnan, or the Hill of the Three Lords, 

 and the sea, was of old the choicest part of the Thane- 

 dom of Cawdor. The Thane's seat used to be at Nairn 

 Invernarne, as it used to be called and his hunt- 



