THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FAEM. 71 



\)\it the main issue of which is not that they succeed 

 in attaining any great bargain over shrewd landlord or 

 demure landlady, but that they impress the future 

 spouse with their exceeding power of connubial 

 economical management. 



I am quite longing for the arrival again of the 

 delicious spring mornings, when we shall see once 

 more the lively little black broods sailing after their 

 proud parents right down into the jaws of the narrow 

 channel, where we shall whip them out with a landing 

 net, to be brought up by a foster mother within doors ; 

 their mamma proceeding, after a few days' widowhood, 

 and sundry excited splashing gyrations, to refit her 

 downy nest amidst the thorns. 



Our impertinent friend, the fox, is so persevering in 

 his visits to the homestead that we shall have to chain 

 a terrier close beside this settlement, and only hope 

 that E-eynard may not come to appreciate the exact 

 value of the chain, and so despoil us after all. 



By the way, there has been another fox brought to 

 grief the last week amidst the crags across the river — 

 a human fox, whose incessant and omnivorous depreda- 

 tions have for some time annoyed the neighbourhood, 

 successfully baffling discovery. His habitation was a 

 small cottage, pitched under shelter of a long beetling 

 range of picturesque inaccessible rocks, with the boiling- 

 river just below, and with no ferry but their own boat, 

 for a long distance. The consequence was that their 

 family were at once aware of any alarm, and had time 

 to make things safe. However, it came about, last 

 week, that his master, a neighbouring farmer, who had 

 long been wearied by the continual mysterious dis- 

 appearance of multifarious articles, boiled fairly over 



