42 THE HABITS OF THE SALMON. 



the whole of my friends were able to cross the ice 

 to the islands for some days, without risk. It is 

 very seldom that large lakes are frozen over in 

 Ireland, and, if I remember rightly, Lough Erne was, 

 on the occasion referred to, an exception. This is 

 perhaps worthy of note, and not out of place here. 

 It reminds me that salmon never run into Loch 

 Earn (Perthshire), out of which the Earn, a cele- 

 brated salmon river, flows, and discharges its waters 

 into the tideway of the Tay some miles below 

 Perth. They run up the Earn as far as the loch 

 in great numbers during the autumn, but no far- 

 ther. This may be accounted for by the fact that 

 there are no spawning grounds above the loch ; but 

 a lake has such attractions for salmon, that people 

 may wonder why they do not take up their quarters 

 there for the time being, even if they had to fall 

 back to the river to reach their spawning grounds. 

 But I am inclined to the belief that the coldness of 

 the loch accounts for their absence in it ; knowing 

 that they have an objection to the cold springs 



