4 ANGLING IN GREA T BRITAIN. 



recital of a few facts. A deceased statesman, who was 

 himself extremely fond of felling his opponents with 

 statistics, once, when such tough arguments went against 

 him, contemptuously remarked that figures might be made 

 to prove anything. My figures, I hope, will prove simply 

 what they are intended to show, namely, that angling in 

 Great Britain, up to the present moment, is anything but a 

 played-out institution. 



In the very last month of the present season some magni- 

 ficent takes of salmon have been recorded from nearly all 

 the Scotch rivers. The largest fish appears to have been 

 taken on the Stobliall water, of the Tay, by Lord Ruthven. 

 It weighed 54 lbs., and was of such fine proportions that it 

 was reserved for preservation and setting up in the museum 

 of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science. This, it is 

 said, was not only the heaviest fish killed by the rod in the 

 Tay during the season, but the heaviest since 1870, when 

 a gentleman, on the Stanley Waters, killed a fish of 61 lbs. 

 In one day upon the Stobhall water, thirty-four salmon 

 were killed : and on the following day two rods landed 

 two-and-twenty fish. 



In the Tweed and Teviot the anglers also obtained 

 sport, sometimes three, sometimes four, and in one instance 

 Col. Vivian and Mr. Arkwright, on the Rutherford Water, 

 killed nearly a dozen fish. On the Mertoun Water the 

 Hon. H. Brougham had twelve fish, and on the Earl 

 of Home's water (Bingham), a couple of gentlemen used 

 their rods to some purpose, the result of a day's sport being 

 fish of 24 lbs., 23 lbs., 23 lbs., 21 lbs., 16 lbs., 16 lbs., 11 lbs., 

 1 1 lbs., 8 lbs., and 6 lbs. In another part of the river, a 

 day or two later, Mr. Brougham killed thirteen fish, and on 

 the Floors' Water the Duke of Roxburghe, in one after- 

 noon, had four — one of 22 lbs., another of 12 lbs., and 



