A more natural and less apocryphal combat than the recent dwarf and bulldog business at Hanley is the following. Be not alarmed; ours is simply a brief account of a fight, fierce and furious enough to be sure, but very natural--for of the Phocidæ, we suppose, as of the "bears and lions" in the well-known hymn, it may be predicted that "'tis their nature to"--a fight, then, between a pair of dog-seals in the bay under our house a few evenings ago. In nothing else are the results of the Gun Tax Act so pleasantly manifest as in the increased, and still increasing, confidence and friendly relations now so happily established between seals and sea-birds of every kind and the sea-side naturalist, as, throwing books and papers for the time aside, he takes his evening walk abroad within sight and sound of the setting sunlit sea, that gently murmurs the while, as if for very gladness, in response to the rosy smile of the departing god. Ever since the beginning of summer, a large dog-seal, recognisable as such by his immense, square, bulldog-like head and fierce hirsute beard, has made our beautiful Onich Bay his favourite evening fishing-ground, until we have come to know him perfectly; no difficult matter either, for he has a curious grey patch, larger than one's hand, on his left cheek, and, unlike most seals, sinks, not log-like, when he disappears under water, but almost always with a lively "header," in which the whole back, arched and shining, is brought to view, as if for our special delectation, as we sit and watch his graceful motions with a glass powerful enough to detect the wary and intelligent glance of his beautiful dark-brown eye, and count, if need were, every separate bristle in his moustache. He is a big and powerful animal, and when in our bay doubtless accounts himself lord of all he surveys, for, of the hundreds of seals in Loch Leven, he alone constantly frequents this particular semi-oval, sandy-bottomed inlet, his size and strength probably ensuring it to him as a sort of reserve, in which woe unto the interloping poacher caught sight of flagrante delicto by the bright eye of "Lord Nelson," as we have long since called him, and all the people about call him, for he is now known to everybody in the hamlet, and frequently spoken about with all the interest attached to a wild animal, actually suspicious and shy, but perfectly harmless, when, with a confidence extremely rare in animals of its kind, it approaches human habitations. On the afternoon of Friday last, "Nelson" was fishing, as usual, in our bay, which at the time was mirror-smooth and calm as calm could be. We had watched him for some time through our glass, and seen him come to the surface more than once, and dispose of a flounder in his usual quiet and leisurely way, when, somewhat to our surprise, we caught sight of another seal, seemingly as large as "Nelson" himself, and about a hundred yards from him; and at the same moment his "lordship" evidently saw him too! There could be no mistake about it, for he, first raising himself half-way out of the water, and gazing excitedly around, with a splendid header and a very significant flourish of his hind flippers, instantly dived; the stranger seal also, who probably knew what was coming, diving immediately afterwards. What happened below is only known to such subaqueous spectators as might be about at the moment; we can only bear witness to what followed, and that was, that in about two minutes there was wild splashing and violent commotion of the waters near the spot at which the stranger seal had disappeared, from the centre of which turmoil the two seals soon emerged, fighting in fierce grip like a pair of enraged bulldogs. For several minutes this wild combat continued; Greek had met Greek; the belligerents hugging each other, bear-like, with their anterior flippers, and tearing at each other's heads and throats with their terrible fangs, for the canine teeth of seals are exceedingly formidable, and their strength of jaw enormous. All this time they wrestled and rolled over and over each other in deadly and desperate encounter, the sea for yards around them one sheet of boiling, hissing foam, here and there streaked with blood, as we could plainly discern by the aid of the glass, for we had, in the meantime, advanced to the very margin of the sea, and were standing within some thirty yards of them. In the wild hurly-burly of the conflict, it was impossible to see or say whether "Nelson" or "Villeneuve" was winning--for by the latter name had our son, who was along with us, already dubbed the stranger seal, as, with true boy-like interest and eagerness, he watched the fight.