284 DECEMBER 



came to more than 800. The lakes were full of 

 rooks, blown from their roosts and drowned; the 

 gardeners at Castle Kennedy collected more than 

 500 corpses out of the lake there, and for days 

 afterwards the woods were full of dead and cripples, 

 the latter having been dashed against the swaying 

 branches and their wings broken. 



But the most remarkable evidence of the force of 

 the wind when the gale was at its height was shown 

 on the beach the following day. A schooner was 

 blown ashore just opposite our house, and some of 

 us went down to see the wreck. The tide-line on 

 the lee shore of Luce Bay was piled with masses of 

 sea-ware, mingled with the dead cod and flat-fish, 

 countless starfish, thousands of crabs, with chaffinches 

 and other small land birds blown from the other side 

 of the bay, twelve miles distant. All these may be 

 seen after an unusually heavy gale, but, long as I 

 have lived by the sea, I never before saw the bodies 

 of lobsters among the slain. Of these, on this occa- 

 sion, we picked up as many as we could carry, 

 lying quite dead in the extent of not more than two 

 hundred yards of beach. We took them home and 

 proved their excellence on the table ; disproving at 

 the same time the cruel tradition that lobsters, in 



