230 SALMOOTD^ OF BRITAIN. 



" A small pond, 70 yards by 30, and in it you can maintain 1400 trout, averag- 

 ing 4 lb. each, in the height of condition, and in beautiful order, and fit for the 

 table. Is it not clear from this that any ordinary lake in a nobleman or gentle- 

 man's grounds can be made to carry any number of fish you require for either 

 sport or table, provided they are properly and duly fed ? It is, as I have always 

 maintained, wholly and solely a question of feeding, and what so easy as to feed a 

 trout ! he will eat nearly everything from bread to cockroaches, and even clover 

 heads do not come amiss to him ... he picked half a dozen heads of red clover 

 from the grass, and then threw them on the water, and the big fellows came at 

 them like tigers, and even when you pulled the heads to pieces, and scattered the 

 petals on the other ponds, the small fish would take them just as greedily." 



Diseases.— These fishes are affected with disease similarly to the salmon and 

 the trout, while bay-salt has been used with success at Howietoun in order to 

 arrest a fungus which has from time to time appeared in the ponds.* 



As food.— The Lochleven trout is generally very highly esteemed, not only for 

 the red colour of its flesh, but because it possesses a peculiar delicacy of flavour, 

 most probably the result of the food upon which it lives, for, remove it to another 

 locality, and the flesh will often become white. Whether the flavour of these 

 fishes now found in the loch has or has not deteriorated since its partial draining, 

 as asserted by some and contradicted by others, must ever remain unsolved, 

 because the manner in which the fish were cooked, the amount of hunger in the 

 partakers of this food, and many other circumstances would have also to be 

 taken into account, while deciding such a question from recollection would be 

 a rather doubtful proceeding. There is a legend that in olden times these fish 

 never took a fly ; and an anonymous writer in 1886, commenting upon the bad 

 luck which had attended an angling competition, observed that fly-fishing on the 

 Loch Leven liad been in existence for about twenty-five years, but previous to that 

 time these fish showed no disposition for winged prey. Granting the general 

 accuracy of this statement, such would seem to partially confirm the opinion of 

 Parnell and some others, that the local food has diminished in amount, therefore 

 these fish will now take the fly. 



Parnell held that at Lochleven the flesh of this form of trout is of a dark 

 red, but in the common loch or burn trout pinkish or often white. But this 

 cannot be held as distinctive of species, for in the same day in Sutherlandshire, 

 at Loch Assynt, some trout captured showed all variations in the colour of their 

 flesh, from white to red, but were all equally well tasted. And Parnell observed 

 that " James Stuart Monteith, Esq., of Closeburn, caught a number of small 

 river trout, and transferred them to a lake (Loch Ettrick), where they grew 

 rapidly ; their flesh, which previously exhibited a white chalky appearance, 

 became in a short time of a deep red, while their external appearance remained 

 the same from the time they were first put in " (p. 370) .f 



Habitat. — Loch Leven in Fifeshire, and other lochs in the south of Scotland 

 and the north of England ; while Parnell recorded having met with this form so 

 far north as Sutherlandshire. 



As to the size this fish attains, six-year-old examples, some weighing as much 

 as 7 lb., were found at the Howietoun ponds in 1882, since then they have been 

 captured up to 101b. in weight. In Loch Leven on April 27th, 1810, one 101b. 

 weight was netted ; while in the New Statistical Account of Scotland mention was 

 made of two examples captured previous to that date, one being nearly 9 lb., the 

 other almost 18 lb. 



* I was informed that crows at Howietoun, after having eaten diseased fish, moulted and 

 became most miserable objects, and three or four were thought to have become leprous. 



t Mr. Ffennell, writing of the Lochlevens at Mr. Andrews' {Timcx, Oct. 14th, 1886), observed, 

 " I certainly think that those I took from the roadside pond in Surrey were the very best I 

 had ever placed before me." Elsewhere these fish have been used for stocking pieces of \yater, 

 but with varying success. Thus Knox, Lone Glens of Scotland, 1854, remarked of those intro- 

 duced into the artificial Lake of Prestmarman, under circumstances highly disadvantageous they 

 throve tolerably well (p. 35). They have also been transferred from Loch Leven to the county 

 of Renfrew. 



