ANGLING ON THE BORDERS. 7 



such a provision now-a-days in indentures and agree- 

 ments, for it is only by setting the law at defiance, as 

 his honest forefathers did, that the Hawick weaver or 

 the Ettrick shepherd can get a mouthful even of a lean 

 and unsavoury kelt — the fresh salmon being utterly 

 unattainable, and less known on great part of the Bor- 

 ders than it is in London or Edinburgh. 



The angling of the Borders is confined almost en- 

 tirely in these waters to the best known varieties of the 

 salmonid^. There are pike and perch in Till and Teviot, 

 but the grayling and the charr, the chub, the carp, the 

 tench, the roach, the dace, and the gudgeon, are un- 

 known. Eels are more or less abundant in all the 

 streams, but the angler must be reduced to rather des- 

 perate circumstances before he sets himself seriously 

 to fish for them. The members of the salmo family 

 are, — the salar, or true salmon and grilse ; the eriox, 

 or bull-trout; the trutta, orwhitling (if trutta be really 

 the proper designation of this beautiful fish, which is 

 much finer than the salmon-trout of other rivers) ; the 

 albus, or herling (blacktail is the local name — a very 

 dubious sort of animal); and the faino^ or common 

 river-trout. 



SALMON-FISniNG. 



The Tweed alone is worth much regard as a salmon- 

 fishing river; but for twenty or thirty miles of its 

 course, from Coldstream upwards, it has a high repu- 

 tation amongst the salmon streams of Scotland. Sal- 

 mon-fishing is not, however, altogether a public amuse- 

 ment — seeing that salmon are private property, which 

 trout are not. No one has a right to catch the true 

 salmon, or any of the migratory species, save in the 



