quietly lifting up the net. They will travel through long dark drains to their spawning grounds, and their instinctive knowledge of suitable streams is just as marvellous as that which guides migratory birds to and from their winter quarters. For instance, a mountain trout will travel several hundred yards up a small stream which is nothing but rough

boulders and falls, in order to avail himself of a hundred yards or two of sluggish water with a sandy bottom, in spite of the fact that he had, if bred in it, probably not been back for several years since quitting its waters. Again, they do not ascend unsuitable streams in any numbers for breeding purposes, even if the volume of water be twice that of a suitable one. After depositing their spawn they descend to their old haunts again in a very weak, lethargic condition. I have seen one through the ice covering

i/o WILD LIFE AT HOME.

a Yorkshire beck for days together in exactly the same situation. Although, perhaps, not quite appropriate, I think it will be best to deal with the common lizard in this the concluding chapter, as the reptile is sure to be met with by the natural history photographer during his wanderings. He is a difficult little chap to make a picture of, however, and an assistant will generally have to be requisitioned before he can be persuaded to "sit" long enough in one attitude. We have lots of lizards on the Surrey hills, and although some of the natural history books say that the reptile is partial to winged insects as food, our observations go to prove that it is fonder of small earthworms. We have tried several times to photograph a whale when the animal came to the surface of the sea to breathe, but, unfortunately, have never succeeded in securing a picture. My first acquaintance with the leviathan was made whilst lying on my back in a smack's boat one dark night beyond the Dogger Bank. I was unable to sleep on account of the rolling and pitching of the craft, and the fact that I was nearly frozen, having nothing to cover sail?me in the way of bed-clothes except an old when I became suddenly aware of strange unearthly sounds in the sea around me. I listened for a long while to a loud wheezing, sighing kind of breathing, without being in the least able to conjecture whence it proceeded; when J put my head out and

STRIPPING WHALE.

inquired from the man on watch. " A school ot herring with the bottle-nb"ses busy among 'em, sir," was the reply. In the morning we saw plenty of the whales, and most of them were working in pairs and moving with the precision of well-trained carriage horses. I have since seen whales dead or alive in many places round the British Isles, but only once saw one spout and that was off Flamborongh Head. I must confess that I was a little bit disappointed with his column of spray, too, because picture-books had given me rather exalted ideas of the performance. Whilst we were in the Shetlands last summer a Norwegian fishing boat towed a dead bottle-nose into Balta Sound. We heard the crew were going to beach it very early one morning in order to strip the blubber, so got up at 3 a.rn. and went down to photograph it on the foreshore, and although dead animals do not come within the scope of this work I venture to reproduce the picture. The carcase of another whale of the same species was washed ashore on another part of the islands, and as its head was injured the natives conjectured that there had been a battle-royal. I have seen the dorsal fin of a shark two or three times in British waters, but, of course, such a limited portion of the fish would not be worth photographing. I know one or two amateur photographers who

have succeeded in making studies of seals on rocks and even in the very act of precipitating themselves into the sea; but although my brother and I have tried hard on several occasions we have never had any luck. We have, however, by waiting and watching sometimes for five hours at a stretch, discovered a fact which it is useful to know namely, that it is next to useless to lie up and wait for the animals to return to a basking rock from which they have been scared. Four species of seals are met with in British waters, and their calves are easily captured on such rocks as the Hiaskers in the Hebrides, and the Out Skerries in the Shetlands. It is said that the animals are partial to the strains of the bagpipes. They are very curious, and when a quiet piece of water which they haunt is visited they keep on popping up and staring with their great dark in the Shetlands told us mild eyes. A gunner that he never thought of shooting at a seal unless the back of the animal's head were towards him, and its eyes consequently averted, because if he did it would be sure to see the flash of his rifle, and go down long before the bullet reached it.

A man armed with a telephoto lens would be able to make pictures of seals basking on rocks.

Apart from its birds and beasts the seashore teems with all sorts of subjects full of interest to the student of Nature, and well worthy the attention of the camera man from a picture point of view.

Crabs may be found in numbers in almost all rock pools, and are so abundant on some parts of our coast as to preclude all chance of line fishing. Directly a baited hook drops to the bottom of the sea they concentrate their attention upon it and in a minute or two there is nothing left but a bit of bare unattractive steel. They are

very difficult to photograph under water, however clear and shallow. I have occasionally met with a lobster in a rock pool, but never saw one, however scared, voluntarily cast off any of its limbs, as we are led to believe they do in some natural history works. We tried hard to figure the accompanying specimen under water at the Fame Islands last year, but did not succeed in making a negative

which we considered good enough to reproduce from, so have used one taken of the crustacean whilst it was on a piece of bare rock close to the water's edge. We have had a good many tries at photo-

SEA AXEMON1S.

graphing objects under water but have never succeeded in making a picture worth boasting about. The accompanying one of sea anemones was made in the Shetland Islands by the aid of a looking-glass with which I strengthened the light upon the pool wherein the creatures lived. Although they look like anchored flowers upon their native rocks they are quite capable of travelling, and I

have seen one little bigger than a pea quietly marching up the red side of a relative ten times its size. I have also noticed that they will move to different parts of a stone during a single day.

Starfish of all sizes are common enough on most of our beaches, especially where there is sand and shingle, and are, of course, easy enough to photograph. They exist in such vast numbers in some parts of the sea that it is quite useless for fishermen to lay down lines, because the bait is all sucked off the hooks long before the fish it is desired to catch have a chance of finding it. Many people think that all starfish found upon the beach are dead, but this is by no means the case. Those that are rigid and firm to the touch are alive, although they are unable to show it by skipping about like sand fleas. Sea urchins, or sea eggs, may sometimes be fished up out of the water, in which case they are, unlike those thrown up by the waves, in possession of their peculiar spines which give them a resemblance to hedgehogs, hence the name of urchin. The illustration upon the opposite page represents a sea urchin and small starfish just where we found them on the shores of a Shetland Voe much frequented by gulls.

On some shores mussels are to be met with literally in millions. Whilst on the eastern side of the Noup of Noss last summer I noticed that every particle of rock, from high-water mark down to the

utmost limit to which the eye could pierce through the clear water, everything was black with them,

SEA. URCHIN AXU STAKFISH.

and not one ot the bivalves was, so far as I could see, more than half an inch in length. Mussels anchor themselves to the piece of rock or wood

upon which they live by a number of brown silken threads of great strength.- I found one some time ago an inch in length attached to a stone, and, with a view to testing the stability of its anchor chains, secured a spring balance, and tying a piece of string round the mussel suspended the whole. The stone weighed two pounds, and weight was added up to four before the silken threads gave way. Even then it must be borne in mind that, owing to the peculiar shape of the object I had to attach my string to, equal strain could not be placed upon each thread at the same moment.

The illustration on the next page, of a typical bit of beach at the head of a Shetland Voe, shows cockle shells both full and empty, a worm casting, and other signs of life and death. Some popular books of natural history say that the cockle when lifted out of its home in the sand has the power to bury itself again or shift to new quarters, but the Scottish Fishery Board does not entirely endorse these views. Some years ago the fishermen of Mid Yell used to rake the sand at the head of the Voe, take what cockles they required for bait, and leave the rest, which, instead of burying themselves, died upon the sand; and this deplorable waste went on until bait for line fishing at sea became so scarce that the authorities had to step in and regulate the destructive method of dealing with it.

Periwinkles, limpets, and other mollusca abound on rocky shores, and although at first sight

they appear to be as stationary as the crags upon which they live, it is surprising what an amount of wandering about some of them really do. I once had some rocks under observation for a week, and was astonished at the way in which a number of purpura shifted from place to place. One day a

SHELLS ON SEASHOKK.

rock would be covered with them, as seen in our illustration on page LSI, and the next hardly a single specimen could be seen upon it.

The large shells in that illustration are popularly called dog periwinkles, or purple shells; the latter name refers to a purple dye that may be obtained from them. This was formerly used in manufactures, but the difficulty of collecting it in sufficient quantities has caused its use to be abandoned.

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