136 THE MOOR AND THE LOCH. 



soon his assertion was verified the little bird rose in the 

 air, wheeled, and fell dead in the sea. 



These being the only pair of black guillemots seen, we were 

 all (Kelly excepted) proportionably elated. The old whaler 

 spun yarns about seals, white bears, walruses, and other polar 

 wonders. The sea-urchin whiffed his pipe and grinned patron- 

 isingly. Our skipper, however, still peered stealthily to the 

 west, and seemed unwilling to lose time by a tack after a 

 group of eiders a little to the south. We were now in no 

 mood to give in ; so, having settled that I was to fire at the 

 drakes and my son at the ducks, we ran past them at long 

 range. He knocked over his bird, and I struck mine, which 

 flew a little distance, and then dropped dead. The eider 

 being also called the " St Cuthbert's Duck," we presented this 

 case to my old and very dear friend, one of the ministers of 

 St Cuthbert's. Of the former two cases, one is in my brother's 

 collection at Kossdhu, the other in my own. 



Under a rather stiff gale we recrossed the channel, but only 

 when under the lee of the North Berwick coast did our 

 captain's brow clear up. Well did this skilled boatman of 

 the Firth know how suddenly the blast he had been dreading 

 might, like Harpsdale's, come at last ! With a quiet chuckle 

 he muttered " Noo, we're a' richt ; " and joyously, not to say 

 triumphantly, steered into port. 



In variety both of shore-birds and water-fowl, the sea-coast 

 far exceeds the fresh-water loch ; and although, from the mask 

 of sea-weed and shifting tides, the shots are more random and 

 precarious than on fresh-water lochs, yet the sea-coast is 

 always preferable to the wild-fowl shooter, as yielding more 

 choice specimens, and far greater numbers of birds. For this 

 reason, a hardy and intelligent sportsman-naturalist will up- 

 hold salt-water shooting as the most delightful, I may say 

 instructive, of any. 



From the dearth of shore insects, waders are rare in all 

 fresh- water lochs ; whereas, on one wild bit of coast flanking 



