CHAP, XXIx.] SEALS IN THE FINDHORN. 225 
Sometimes at high-water and when the river is swollen a seal 
comes in pursuit of salmon into the Findhorn, notwithstanding 
the smallness of the stream and its rapidity. Iwas one day, in 
November, looking for wild ducks near the river, when I was 
called to by a man who was at work near the water, and who told 
me that some “ muckle beast” was playing most extraordinary 
tricks in the river. He could not tell me what beast it was, but 
only that it was something “no that canny.” After waiting a 
short time, the riddle was solved by the appearance of a good- 
sized seal, into whose head I instantly sent a cartridge, having 
no balls with me. The seal immediately plunged and splashed 
about in the water at a most furious rate, and then began swim- 
ming round and round in a circle, upon which I gave him the 
other barrel, also loaded with one of Eley’s cartridges, which 
quite settled the business, and he floated rapidly away down the 
stream. I sent my retriever after him, but the dog, being very 
young and not come to his full strength, was baffled by the 
weight of the animal and the strength of the current, and could 
not land him; indeed, he was very near getting drowned himself, 
in consequence of his attempts to bring in the seal, who was still 
struggling. I called the dog away, and the seal immediately 
sank. The next day I found him dead on the shore of the bay, 
with (as the man who skinned him expressed himself) “ twenty- 
three pellets of large hail in his craig.” 
Another day, in the month of July, when shooting rabbits on 
the sand-hills, a messenger came from the fishermen at the stake- 
nets, asking me to come in that direction, as the “ muckle sealgh ” 
was swimming about, waiting for the fish to be caught -in the nets, 
in order to commence his devastation. 
I accordingly went to them, and having taken my observa- 
‘ions of the locality and the most feasible points of attack, I got 
-he men to row me out to the end of the stake-net, where there 
was a kind of platform of netting, on which I stretched myself, 
with a bullet in one barrel and a cartridge in the other. I then 
lirected the men to row the boat away, as if they had left the 
aets. They had scarcely gone three hundred yards from the 
lace when I saw the seal, who had been floating, apparently 
inconcerned, at some distance, swim quietly and fearlessly up to 
she net. I had made a kind of breastwork of old netting before 
Q 
