206 BRITISH FERTILITY. 



breast pocket of his coat while he was trying to sleep. 

 On still another occasion, while he was taking a nap, 

 an owl robbed him of a mouse which he wished to 

 take home alive, and which was tied by a string to 

 his waistcoat. He says he has put his walking-stick 

 into the mouth of a fox just roused from his lair, and 

 the fox worried the stick and took it away with him. 

 Once, in descending a precipice, he cornered two 

 foxes upon a shelf of rock, when the brutes growled 

 at him and showed their teeth threateningly. As he 

 let himself down to kick them out of his way, they 

 bolted up the precipice over his person. Along the 

 Scottish coast, crows break open shell-fish by carry- 

 ing them high in the air and letting them drop upon 

 the rocks. This is about as thoughtful a proceeding 

 as that of certain birds of South Africa, which fly 

 amid the clouds of migrating locusts and clip off the 

 wings of the insects with their sharp beaks, causing 

 them to fall to the ground, where they are devoured 

 at leisure. Among the Highlands, the eagles live 

 upon hares and young lambs ; when the shepherds 

 kill the eagles, the hares increase so fast that they 

 eat up all the grass, and the flocks still suffer. 



The scenes along the coast of Scotland during the 

 herring-fishing, as described by Charles St. John in 

 his " Natural History and Sport in Moray," are char- 

 acteristic. The herrings appear in innumerable 

 shoals, and are pursued by tens of thousands of birds 

 in the air, and by the hosts of their enemies of the 

 deep. Salmon and dog-fish prey upon them from 



