CHAP, xxix.] SEALS IN THE FINDHORN. 225 



Sometimes at high-water and when the river is swollen a seal 

 comes in pursuit of salmon into the Findhorn, notwithstanding 

 the sn'allness of the stream and its rapidity. I was one day, in 

 November, looking for wild ducks near the river, when I was 

 called to by a man who was at work near the water, and who told 

 me that some " muckle beast " was playing most extraordinary 

 tricks in the river. He could not tell me what beast it was, but 

 only that it was something " no that canny." After waiting a 

 short time, the riddle was solved by the appearance of a good- 

 sized seal, into whose head I instantly sent a cartridge, having 

 no balls with me. The seal immediately plunged and splashed 

 about in the water at a most furious rate, and then began swim- 

 ming round and round in a circle, upon which I gave him the 

 other barrel, also loaded with one of Eley's cartridges, which 

 quite settled the business, and he floated rapidly away down the 

 stream. I sent my retriever after him, but the dog, being very 

 young and not come to his full strength, was baffled by the 

 weight of the animal and the strength of the current, and could 

 not land him ; indeed, he was very near getting drowned himself, 

 in consequence of his attempts to bring in the seal, who was still 

 struggling. I called the dog away, arid the seal immediately 

 sank. The next day I found him dead on the shore of the bay, 

 witli (as the man who skinned him expressed himself) " twenty- 

 three pellets of large hail in his craig." 



Another day, in the month of July, when shooting rabbits on 

 the sand-hills, a messenger came from the fishermen at the stake- 

 nets, asking me to come in that direction, as the " muckle sealgh " 

 was swimming about, waiting for the fish to be caught in the nets, 

 in order to commence his devastation. 



I accordingly went to them, and having taken my observa- 

 tions of the locality and the most feasible points of attack, I got 

 the men to row me out to the end of the stake- net, where there 

 was a kind of platform of netting, on which I stretched myself, 

 with a bullet in one barrel and a cartridge in the other. I then 

 directed the men to row the boat away, as if they had left the 

 nets. They had scarcely gone three hundred yards from the 

 place when I saw the seal, who had been floating, apparently 

 unconcerned, at some distance, swim quietly and fearlessly up to 

 the net. I had made a kind of breastwork of old netting before 



Q 



