76 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



which I have myself angled in, or am otherwise acquainted 

 with. 



LOCH MAIDAIDH AND SMOO BURN-TROUT. 



Beginning in the north of Scotland, I would first speak 

 of certain lochs around Durness which I visited in 1882. 

 Six years previous to that date, one Mr. Neil Campbell caught 

 at Smoo five or six trout in the short reach of burn which 

 flows from the Smoo cave to the sea, and put them into the 

 Alt Smoo above the cave. Until this time there were no 

 trout above the fall, which plunges through the opening in 

 the roof of the cave and falls some forty feet into the dark 

 pool below. The whole stretch of water occupied by trout 

 before this introduction was effected were the waters of the 

 inner and outer cave, and a distance of about 30 yards 

 between the cave and the sea, and even less at the time of 

 spring tides. I endeavoured to obtain specimens of the trout 

 where Mr. Neil Campbell had obtained them, but did not 

 succeed in getting one, though I was most anxious to do so. 



Since the introduction, the crofters of the neighbourhood 

 when cutting or carting peats, or driving their cattle on 

 the Commonty which surrounds Loch Maidaidh, and which 

 communicates with Alt Smoo by a deep ditch-like and 

 winding stream through boggy land, with, however, firm 

 banks, and runs with the clearer water of Alt Smoo until the 

 whole plunges down the hole in the roof of the cave have 

 occasionally seen a few trout rising, but no one at the time 

 of my visit had ever thrown a fly upon the loch or burn. On 

 the i6th June 1882 I crossed over the stony, barren-looking 

 moor, where the crofters' cattle pick up a scanty summer's 

 grass between the hummocks of peat resting on stony sub- 

 soil. I crossed, also, the now dry bed of another loch which 

 had been drained some time ago. Arriving at Loch Maid- 

 aidh, I fished from the crofters' sheep-washing piers ; but the 

 result was only one beautifully formed -^ Ib. trout, with a mar- 

 vellous line of scarlet, or rather crimson, spots on the sides, 

 and somewhat silvery scales. Loch Maidaidh is peaty and 

 dark. I then moved on to the burn, which runs dark and deep 

 between deeply caved and undermined banks, and here and 

 there spreading out over the marshy meadows or peaty flats. 



