MARCH 77 



made a long run, to get abreast of him again ; and 

 such relief I felt and enjoyed — but only for a moment. 

 No sooner had I the fish well under command of the 

 rod and was looking out for a convenient place to land 

 him than the rod point sprang up dismally, the line 

 slackened, the fly had lost its hold ! 



It was a bitter moment. That it was a heavy 

 salmon I make no doubt ; but whether it was a clean 

 fish, or a great kelt foul-hooked, or a baggit (an un- 

 spawned, and therefore unclean, fish), I can affirm 

 nothing. I suppose, on the whole, 



' 'Tis better to have hooked and lost, 

 Than never to have hooked at alL' 



XII 



One of the foibles that do most closely beset amateur 

 gardeners, especially in the milder parts of 

 the island, is their insatiable ambition to 

 establish plants of doubtful hardihood — things which 

 may pass unscathed, or partially scathed, through ordin- 

 ary seasons, but succumb in one slightly more ungenial 

 than the average. There is no more incorrigible sinner 

 in this respect than the present writer. Lulled to a 

 false sense of security by a series of mild seasons, he 

 has been brought to his knees by the extraordinary 

 caprice of the winter of 1912-13,^ and he is now endur- 

 ing full penalty in the shape of many a vacant space 

 in the borders — many a shrivelled corpse among the 

 shrubs. 



^ I write on the south-west coast of Scotland within a mile of the 

 sea, which imparts much mildness to our climate ; yet in the last 



