264 SALMON AND TROUT, 
marvel and mystery—his avocation gives him no common op- 
portunities for observing some of the most beautiful and curious 
forms of animal and vegetable life. Stealing along by the water’s 
edge, his footfall lost in the murmur of the stream, or muffled 
by Nature’s carpeting, he enters unsuspected the haunts of the 
shyest creatures. He sees the otter glide down from his cairn, 
or lift his sleek treacherous visage in the midst of the pool; he 
notes the general consternation of the salmonidz at the sinuous 
rush of the seal, whom hungry pursuit has tempted beyond the 
salt water ; ‘doe and roe and red deer good’ slake their thirst 
in his sight ; he surprises the blackcock’s deserted mate and 
progeny in their moist dingle, the wild duck and her brood as 
they paddle through the sedges. Leaning back against the 
trunk of a willow, he sees the kingfisher, a living sapphire, 
shoot close to his dazzled eyes, or from her perch over his head 
drop ona sudden plumb into the river, and as suddenly emerge 
with her prey ; or hidden in the shadow of an overhanging 
rock, he marks the water ouzel, glittering in a silver panoply of 
air bubbles, run briskly along the sandy bottom of the burn. 
Even the innocent gambols of the much-calumniated water rat, 
joyous after his guiltless feast of grass and water weeds, or the 
familiar wiles of the nesting peewit will find him not an un- 
amused spectator. If a botanist, he will pick his choicest ferns 
in the damp rocky hollows by the waterfall, his rarest lichens on 
the bare slopes above some Alpine tarn, his favourite orchises 
in the meadows watered by a well-peopled stream. He will 
rejoice in the delicate beauty of the pinguicula along some 
tiny moorland runnel, and admire the silver-fringed stars of the 
bog-bean beside deeper and blacker waters, where ‘the quaking 
turf craves wary walking. Mr. Balfour’s utmost indulgence 
would hardly admit me to a degree in botany, yet it was with a 
glow of pleasure that I first found myself throat-deep in a bed 
of the Osmunda regalis, on the banks of the Leven, or gathered 
the ‘pale and azure-pencilled’ clusters of the wood-vetch by 
Greta-side, or discovered the fringed! yellow water lily on the 
1 Villarsia nympheoides, 
