SPORT. IN BUTE. 219 



to me unhurt, and was nearly the size of its equally noisy 

 parents. 



A moor-lochan, imbedded among the very peaks of the 

 North Bute hills, is the chosen resort of the moss-ducks. 

 The loch is about half a mile in circumference, and its 

 situation so retired as to attract, in addition to the ducks, 

 about a score of herons. On account of the bare flat banks, 

 stalking is impossible ; but even were it otherwise, the herons 

 seem to have constituted themselves the sentries of the loch, 

 and, taking post all round it, their telescope necks effectually 

 stop all stealthy intrusion. One day, when grouse-shooting 

 round this loch, I noticed that the sentinels were absent. 

 Coupling my setters, and giving them in charge of a gillie, 

 I managed, by great care and waste of time, to fire a random 

 shot into the thick of the flock when they flew. The chance 

 was much too distant to injure their bodies, but a duck 

 and drake dropped wing-broken into the water. Both made 

 several dives, and finally disappeared at opposite sides of the 

 loch. Confident in the painstaking caution of Auk, I desired 

 him to search the bank, expecting a shot when the ducks 

 rushed from their hiding into the water; but at the first 

 round this experienced retriever found and secured both, 

 without giving either the chance of making a dash from 

 their concealment, which the slightest bungle on his part 

 would have enabled them to do. 



Not long after I had my revenge on one of the self-elected 

 guardians of the ducks. Placing one of my sons a little 

 below the outlet, where the flight, when disturbed, are apt to 

 leave the fresh water for the sea, I showed myself on the top 

 of a steep height on the opposite side. As soon as I appeared, 

 the ducks knit together and took wing, but flew past the am- 

 buscade quite out of reach. Like all very young sportsmen, 

 the boy fired a warning to the ducks to take it high when 

 again expelled from their city of waters. Now it happened 



