SPORT IN BUTE. 207 



had been so bold that morning as to prevent his wife from 

 filling her pitcher at the spring. " The beast," quoth she, 

 pathetically, " pat up its awfu' coorse head close to me an' 

 the bairns I was feared it wad come ashore an' tak' ane o' 

 them awa'." 



On several occasions I walked down to the bay armed and 

 ready, but the enemy was either invisible, or was plying his 

 piratical vocation among the salmon far beyond reach of my 

 bullets. During 1865 he did not put in an appearance at 

 all; and a few years before he also absented himself for a 

 whole salmon season, but returned on the following one at the 

 usual time. The many years that the Ettrick seal summered 

 in its bay gained for it some local notoriety ; while its curious 

 and methodical habits so far interested me as to stop all desire 

 to put an end to its interesting career. 



Not being an entomologist, my observation of the insects of 

 Bute has been very circumscribed. I have seen none of the 

 southern butterflies or moths which the mild climate of this 

 island had led me to expect. Neither cockchafers nor stag- 

 beetles enliven the twilight, and not one specimen of the larger 

 sphinxes have we captured or even seen. Had there been 

 any, no doubt some of these gorgeously-pencilled beauties 

 would have found their way into our drawing-room, along with 

 the sober-coloured small moths which beset our gas-lustres 

 every warm, dark night, as both sides of our glass door into 

 the garden were left open, when the gas was lit, and long after 

 darkness set in. 



In the summer of 1864, not only were wasps' nests more 

 numerous than I ever saw them anywhere else, but their size 

 was also enormous. There were at least a dozen close to the 

 castle and garden. I have long had in my little museum 

 what I considered as fine a specimen of the wasp's hive as it 

 was possible to procure ; but two of these from Bute (one 

 built in a hedge adjoining the garden, the other fixed to a 

 currant-bush in the very midst of the fruit) were nearly 



