MAKCH 73 



or its master, and fallow-deer and roe have no means 

 of masking the great white disk which is their family 

 badge. Wherefore, if white posteriors were designed 

 as danger signals, they would constitute an incessant 

 cry of 'Wolf!' and exact no heed. The deeper one 

 digs into this problem the more elusive does it become. 



XI 



Snow had fallen pretty heavily in the night ; it lay 

 over all to a depth of two or three inches ; but In Lower 

 the early March wind that had been whirling strathspey 

 down the strath in pitiless gusts for a week past had 

 blown itself weary and was still. Yesterday the great 

 pines in Orton Wood stood in massive gloom against the 

 northern sky ; l to-day each of them is white as a bride- 

 cake, and the Spey rolls steely-black through a wan 

 land. It is cold very cold ; but there are streaks of 

 azure in the cloud canopy, and stray sunbeams light 

 up the landscape here and there. 



Not these the conditions which a south-country 

 angler might deem propitious for the contemplative 

 man's recreation ; indeed, as I went forth into the keen 

 air from a snug fireside breakfast, I was half disposed 

 to commend Robert Burton, who, in his delectable 

 Anatomie, enumerates angling among the causes of 



1 Alas for this noble woodland ! it is no more. When the great war 

 shut us off from the imports of timber, whereon we had learnt almost 

 exclusively to rely, the Government turned in their dire need to those 

 home woods which they had hitherto refused to consider worth atten- 

 tion or encouragement. One-fourth of the trees in the United 

 Kingdom have now (1918) been laid low without regard to maturity, 

 shelter, or seasoning ; and much of what remains is doomed to follow. 



