TROUT IN ISOLATED LOCHS 



How the apples got into the dumpling was not 

 half so much of a problem to the prince in the 

 story as how the fish got into the lochs is to 

 the angler who troubles his head about such sub- 

 jects. Most of the upland lochs of Scotland are 

 stocked with trout. Many of them, however, 

 possess no practicable connection with any other 

 trouting water. How, then, did they get stocked? 

 To take a particular case : I have just explored, 

 not for the first time, an elevated rocky plateau in 

 a north-western county, on which there are seven 

 lochs. The lowest of them and the largest is 

 marked on the Ordnance Survey as standing at 

 exactly a thousand feet elevation. The other six 

 are from a hundred to three hundred feet higher. 

 Of the seven, only two are connected by stream 

 with one another^ and all are drained by burns 

 which make the whole descent of their thousand 

 and odd feet in, a,t most, a couple of miles. In 

 one case the draining burn makes a sheer fall at 

 one point in its course of over a hundred feet ; 

 and falls far beyond the leaping powers of either 

 trout or salmon occur on all the others. As they 

 are fed from aboVe by mere rills, their isolation is 

 complete. 



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