SALMON TROUT. 79 



the Salmon, and the females are said to run up the rivers 

 before the males. Sir William Jardine says, " In approach- 

 ing the entrance of rivers, or in seeking out, as it were, 

 some one they preferred, shoals of this fish may be seen 

 coasting the bays and headlands, leaping and sporting in 

 great numbers, from about one pound to three or four 

 pounds in weight ; and in some of the smaller bays the 

 shoal could be traced several times circling it, and appa- 

 rently feeding. In these bays they are occasionally taken 

 with a common hang-net stretched across ; and when angled 

 for in the estuaries, with the ordinary flies which are used 

 in the rivers of the South for Grilse, rose and took so 

 eagerly that thirty-four were the produce of one rod, en- 

 gaged for about an hour and a half. They enter every 

 river and rivulet in immense numbers, and when fishing 

 for the Salmon are annoying from their quantity. The 

 food of those taken with the rod in the estuaries appeared 

 very indiscriminate ; occasionally the remains of some small 

 fish, which were too much digested to be distinguished ; 

 sometimes flies, beetles, or other insects, which the wind 

 or tide had carried out ; but the most general food seemed 

 to be the Talitris locusta, or common sand-hopper, with 

 which some of their stomachs were completely crammed. 

 It is scarcely possible to arrive with any certainty at the 

 numbers of this fish. Two hundred are frequently taken 

 at a single draught of a sweep-net, and three hundred have 

 occasionally been counted. 1 '' They are much more numerous 

 in the Don, the Spey, and the Tay, than in the Tweed. 



Great quantities of this Salmon Trout are sent to the 

 London market ; those from Perth, Dundee, Montrose, and 

 Aberdeen appear, from their comparative depth of body, 

 to be better fed, are higher in colour, and considered to be 

 finer in flavour than from some other localities. The Ford- 

 wich Trout of Isaac Walton is the Salmon Trout ; and 



