Dyes the wide wave with bloody light,
Then sinks at once—and all is night.”
We were unanimous in predicting an immediate and violent storm of wind and rain, but the next morning came in bright, breezy, and cloudless, and such it has continued ever since. Such phenomena, and the nature of the weather following them, are always worth recording. Virgil, in his first Georgic instructs the husbandman to confide in those indications of the weather afforded by the aspect of the sun, for the rather curious reason, however, that the obscuration of the solar orb gave faithful warning of the impending fate of Cæsar! A very striking instance of a form of sophism, well known to the logician, in which an accidental circumstance is assumed as sufficient to establish efficient connection. On the morning of Wednesday last we had a smart touch of frost here in exposed situations—a strange and anomalous phenomenon in the dog-days truly! But when we remember that Mr. Glaisher (who for purely scientific purposes has put his life into greater peril than any other living man), in his recent aerial ascent met with a regular snow-storm at the elevation of only about one mile above the earth’s surface, we shall not wonder so much, perhaps, that a frost current should, under certain circumstances, occasionally penetrate earthwards even in the dog-days. We should have stated above that on the 13th we carefully examined the solar disc with an excellent four-feet telescope belonging to Ardgour, when it presented only two “spots” or maculæ, and neither of these of remarkable size or form, situated close together on the orb’s south-western limb.
We are glad to observe that the “Demoiselle” or Numidian crane recently shot at Deerness has been preserved, and is to fall into careful keeping. Its feeding on oats, however, is very extraordinary, and only to be accounted for by the supposition that its natural food was so scarce, in a locality so unlike its own sunny clime, that it was fain to fill its crop with the readiest possible edible that presented itself. The snowy owl, a specimen of which is stated to have been recently shot in Sutherland, is by no means a rare visitor in Britain. A pair, male and female, in full plumage, were shot on the links of St. Andrews, by Captain Dempster, of the Indian Army, in the winter of 1847, and are now, we believe, to be seen in the University museum of that city. They have been known to breed in Shetland, but never, so far as we are aware, on the mainland, or anywhere, indeed, farther south than 59° or 60° of latitude. Is the specimen in Mr. M’Leay’s possession male or female? What is the colour of its plumage—pure white, or slightly barred and mottled with brown? These are important questions, and every account of such rare visitors should be as minute in such particulars as possible. The snowy owl, like the Arctic fox, hare, ermine, &c, is supposed to change its plumage with the season, the immaculate white of its winter dress being exchanged for a summer garb of mixed, spotted, and barred brown and white. It is highly important that such a point as this should be decided. The scientific name given it—Surna nyctea—is incorrect. It is probably a misprint for Strix nyctea, so styled by Linnæus, and after him continued as most appropriate by succeeding naturalists without exception. In Sweden, where it breeds and is very common, it is said to feed principally upon hares, hence Buffon calls it La Chouette Harfang, the latter word being the Swedish for the white or Alpine hare. It was the French naturalists, also, who first gave the name Demoiselle to the Numidian crane, its symmetry of form, tasteful disposition of plumage, and elegance of deportment, in their opinion, fully justifying the complimentary appellation. Its economy was first carefully studied, and a correct description of it given, about the beginning of the present century by the naturalists who accompanied the French expedition to Egypt under Napoleon, who, whatever his faults were, was at least neither indifferent to, nor neglectful of, the interests of the arts and sciences. Does the fieldfare breed in Scotland? We are afraid the reply must still be in the negative. We have little doubt that the bird seen by Mr. Fraser of Hamilton was the missel-thrush, and that the nest and egg in his possession belong to the same bird, that is, the Turdus vixivorus, and not to its congener the Turdus pilaris. We are led to this opinion by the fact that the female missel-thrush is very like the fieldfare in plumage, and not very noticeably different in size. The nest referred to by Mr. Fraser was, he says, situated in the fork of a tree, about fourteen feet from the ground, exactly about the height the throstle generally fixes upon for its nest, whereas, according to our best authorities, the fieldfare builds at the top, or very near “the top of the tallest pines.” We give but little weight to the shape and markings of the egg as described, for it frequently happens that the eggs of different birds, even of the same species, differ in a very remarkable manner. The hint, however, that the fieldfare may sometimes breed in Scotland is worth attending to, and we have marked it down for future inquiry and investigation. It was for long a question of fierce debate whether or not the well-known woodcock bred in this country. The matter has, however, been of late years completely set at rest by the researches of naturalists, clearly bringing out the fact that it not only breeds in Scotland, but that such an event, instead of being rare, is, on the contrary, of comparatively frequent occurrence. This very season, about the middle of May, one of Ardgour’s keepers brought us the wings of a young woodcock, with the quill feathers still pulpy and soft, which, of the original bird, was all he could secure from the clutches of a hawk that was breakfasting on the dainty morsel in the woods of Coirrechadrachan. We also understand that at least two woodcock’s nests, with eggs in them, were known to some parties in this neighbourhood at the beginning of the season. It is, therefore, possible that the fieldfare may yet be proved to breed in Scotland, but the evidence for the establishment of such a fact must be much stronger than that brought forward by Mr. Fraser.
CHAPTER XIII.
Extraordinary Heat and Drought—Plentifulness of Fungi—Cows fond of Mushrooms—Shoals of Whales—A rippling Breeze, and a Sail on Loch Leven.
If of late we had to admit—somewhat reluctantly be it confessed—that it was “wet, very wet,” even for Lochaber, we have it in our power now at length [1st August 1870] to strike a different key-note, and to say that it is dry, very dry; bright, very bright; hot, very hot,—so dry, bright, and hot, in fact, that one might as well be on the banks of the Nile or Niger as on the shores of Loch Leven, were it not for a delightful sea breeze that never fails to come to cheer and gladden us evening and morning; and then you may fancy—that is, if you can swim, dear reader—the unspeakable delight of a headlong plunge into the cool and sparkling waters of the advancing tide! The heat is in truth something extraordinary, and if it weren’t that you felt yourself fast retrograding into the same condition, it would be an amusing study to watch a certain class of people, generally the most staid and stiff and correct possible, who, as a rule, would rather die than violate the least of the proprieties, now going about in a semi-nude state, as if they had just escaped from a lunatic asylum, panting the while as if they were in the last stage of asthma, and streaming with perspiration as if they had resolutely made up their minds to melt away and dissolve like untimely snowballs.
Crops everywhere are splendid, and, after all the rain of the earlier part of the season, which gave them growth, this is just the weather that suits them in their present stage, strengthening and consolidating their tissues, and bringing them to a rapid and healthy maturity. The meadow hay crop is unusually heavy everywhere. We saw a field belonging to Mr. Maclean of Ardgour in the act of being cut the other day, and we never saw anything finer or heavier fall before a scythe. This is precisely the weather for securing such a heavy swathe in good order, although one cannot but feel for the poor scythesman, who, brown as an Indian and bathed in sweat, wields his glittering weapon under a burning, blazing sun, such as at a pinch might serve the turn of our cousins of Jamaica or Demerara. Some idea of the extraordinary heat and drought of the past week may be gathered from the fact that it was frequently found possible to stack or carry into the barn in one day the hay that had only been cut on the day previous—something hitherto unheard-of, we should say, in Lochaber, or, indeed, in any part of the Highlands.
We cannot recollect having ever before seen all kinds of fungi so plentiful as they are throughout Lochaber this season. You meet mushrooms of all sizes and of all shapes, both edible and poisonous; while fairy rings are so common that you may encounter one or more of them in every bit of old pasture and in every greenwood glade. One of these rings we had the curiosity to measure a few days ago, and we found its diameter to be precisely fifteen feet, giving it a circumference of upwards of fifty feet, as nearly as possible a a perfect circle, the emerald outline, studded with its peculiar pretty white, button-like Agaraci, amid the lighter green of the surrounding herbage, as distinct and easily traceable, even at several hundred yards distance, as ever was halo round the moon. We noticed that a cow, happening to come the way while we were examining another of these fairy rings, ate them all with evident relish, browsing so steadily along and around, that when she completed the circle she had not left a single one. We hope that they agreed with her, though we should not like to have joined in the repast, for we have a salutary horror of the whole mushroom tribe. The so-called edible mushroom is said to be delicious when properly cooked: should it ever in any form be a dish on a table at which we are seated, we promise to give our share of it, totus, teres atque rotundus, whole and unimpaired, to the first that will accept it. To the present intense heat, coming so suddenly on the back of long-continued rains, is probably due the extraordinary abundance of all kinds of fungi.