From Fox's Earth 



patches of stillness behind the boulders. Whether 

 any of the captures are natives of the burn were 

 hard to say. Trout are found in burns as small, 

 and with no egress save the sea. Where is free 

 passage to roomier deeps, trout are seldom bound. 

 The natives, if such there were, must have been 

 among the smaller and lanker. An occasional 

 large one was on its passage from the Esk. Trout 

 seek upward from wider to narrower waters : it is 

 a habit of theirs. They rather like the blustering 

 current of an incline. 



In the shallows of the pools, the patient and 

 wily heron stands, gazing down the shimmering 

 surface. Attracted by his scaly legs a trout 

 comes within easy reach : or, half exhausted from 

 its struggle upward against the rush, offers the 

 white of its side as a target for the bayonet-like 

 thrust. Over the slopes on either bank, shepherds 

 come on the wine-stained eggs, with the grape-like 

 blotches of the mountain dotterel. Only shep- 

 herds who, with a patient half-attention, watch 

 their black-faced hill flocks by day find what is 

 so rare. 



Here the domain of the water ousel touches on 

 that of his Highland cousin. The one is a bird 

 of the stream, the other of the adjoining drier 

 hill slopes. The dipper rather affects brawling 

 burns, with their endless prattle and gurgle. The 

 main external difference, as every one knows, is 

 that the white lake over the breast of the dipper 



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