LOCH LEVEN AND LOCH TAY 155 



itself to a fresh-water life. It crosses freely with 

 both ; its affinities seem to be with the latter. 



The loch owes its pre-eminence to the high average 

 in size and weight, compared with larger, and more 

 promising sheets of water. The exception is to 

 hook anything much under a pound. No fisher 

 baskets fry that are reckoned by the number. Up- 

 wards of twenty thousand such trout are captured 

 every year. This is a tradition of the water, and 

 suggests some cause, which I shall discuss elsewhere. 



To meet the waste, as many as three hundred 

 thousand fry are sometimes introduced at one time. 

 And a sufficient supply is always on hand to satisfy 

 the demands of dwellers by other lochs, and streams, 

 who wish to have such an enviable commodity 

 nearer home. In many cases in which they are 

 sent to a distance, and introduced into new waters, 

 the purchase can scarcely be worth the trouble, and 

 the money. There is the risk of the new-comers, 

 after a few years, becoming undistinguishable from 

 the natives, and degenerating into very common 

 trout indeed. 



It will always remain a question whether those 

 artificially-reared fry, when turned out to fend for 

 themselves, will grow into as vigorous adults as 

 those deposited by the spawning fish, in the feeders 



