IX 



LOCH LEVEN AND LOCH TAY 



T HAVE caught flounders, in one's flounder days, 

 amid the brackish waters, where the overflow 

 of Loch Leven finds its way into the sea. Then I 

 remember to have heard from the lips of old men, 

 who may have been partakers in the fray, tales 

 of new run salmon, when as many as fifty were 

 enmeshed in one sweep of the net. 



In Sir Robert Sibbald's History of Kinross-shire, 

 we read that salmon, and even flounders find their 

 way up to the loch. This refers to a hundred and 

 seventy years ago, but must have persisted to a 

 much later date ; probably, through the first quarter 

 of the present century. 



For several miles from its mouth, the Leven is 

 now so polluted that nothing with fewer lives than 

 an eel could survive ; an instance of what has been 

 permitted to happen in the case of far too many 



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