A MEMORABLE GALE 283 



It is a pretty sight to watch a brood of young 

 stoats at play on summer evening. The grace 

 and swiftness of their movements remind one of fish 

 rather than four-footed creatures ; then, when they 

 take alarm, off go the parents, with seven or eight 

 young ones so close in their wake, jumping sideways 

 over each others' backs, that the whole procession 

 looks like a single animal threading its way through 

 the herbage. 



LXXXVI 



The storm which blew in the early morning of 

 December 23, 1894, was probably the ^ Memorable 

 most severe while it lasted of any that Gale 

 have visited the west coast in living memory. No- 

 body who viewed our district can forget the desolation 

 revealed by daylight. We did not lose so many 

 trees, indeed, as in the great storm of December 

 1882, because we had not so many to lose. In that 

 year the loss on Monreith estate came to about 

 25,000 trees (the Duke of Buccleuch reckoned his 

 loss at 1,200,000); we afterwards counted about 

 7000 trees blown out by this latter storm. But the 

 general damage done was far more appalling; my 

 bill for re-roofing farmhouses stripped of their slates 



