all there, but to my mind the big blubber-lipped rock fish were the
peacocks of my pool.

I was so fond of lingering by this pool to read, and smoke, and watch
the fish, that I built myself a rock summer-house, and roofed it in with
wood, upon which I placed a layer of mortar, and then thatched it with
pine branches and braken. It was a picturesque little house, in a
picturesque spot, and if I tell the truth, I believe I made a
picturesque Crusoe.

My dress consisted, in summer, of white duck trousers, canvas shoes,
coloured flannel shirt, a blue jean jacket, and broad-brimmed hat. Round
my waist I always wore a long red sash; it was four yards long,
consequently, would encircle my waist three times and still leave some
of the two ends to hang down at my side. This sash I found very useful,
for I used it as a wallet or hold-all. Nothing came amiss to
it--tobacco, pipes, cartridges, biscuits, fruit, fishing tackle, all
were tucked away in it at different or the same time, as they were so
easy to get at, and left the hands free.

Now let us leave fish and fishing, and see in what other ways I enjoyed
my solitary life.

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CHAPTER VI.

"FLAP" THE GULL--SURGICAL OPERATION--THE GULL WHO REFUSED TO
DIE--TAXIDERMY EXTRAORDINARY--FEATHERED FRIENDS--SNAKES.

Every part of the island swarmed with rabbits, in fact, it was a perfect
warren, and must have contained thousands of them. I had therefore to
devise some means of keeping them down, or they would so have multiplied
as to eat up everything that to a rodent was toothsome, and that is
_nearly_ everything green, even to the furze bushes. I had only four
tooth-traps with me, and these were not nearly adequate for the number I
wanted to kill, so I had recourse to wire gins. These I soon became an
adept in setting, and discovered that by placing the thin wire noose
close to the ground I could catch the wee rabbits, while by keeping the
lower part of the noose about four inches above the turf I could secure
the large ones. By practice and observation I soon learned not only the
best "runs," but could tell just where they would place their feet, as
they bounded up or down the steep acclivities.

At times I had seventy or eighty gins set, and caught perhaps a hundred
a week in the season, which I regret to say were nearly all thrown into
the sea. This destruction of good food I