ANGLING ON THE BORDERS. 7 



such a provision now-a-days in indentures and agree- 

 ments, for it is only by setting the law at defiance, as 

 his honest forefathers did, that the Hawick weaver or 

 the Ettrick shepherd can get a mouthful even of a lean 

 and unsavoury kelt the fresh salmon being utterly 

 unattainable, and less known on great part of the Bor- 

 ders than it is in London or Edinburgh. 



The angling of the Borders is confined almost en- 

 tirely in these waters to the best known varieties of 

 the Salmonidse. There are pike and perch in Till and 

 Teviot, but the grayling and the charr, the chub, the 

 carp, the tench, the roach, the dace, and the gudgeon, 

 are unknown. Eels are more or less abundant in all 

 the streams, but the angler must be reduced to rather 

 desperate circumstances before he sets himself seriously 

 to fish for them. The members of the salmo family 

 are, the salar, or true salmon and grilse ; the eriox, 

 or bull-trout; the trutta, or whitling (if trutta be really 

 the proper designation of this beautiful fish, which is 

 much finer than the salmon- trout of other rivers) ; the 

 albuSj or herling (blacktail is the local name a very 

 dubious sort of animal) ; and the fario, or common 

 river-trout. 



SALMON-FISHING. 



The Tweed alone is worthy much regard as a salmon - 

 fishing river; but for twenty or thirty miles of its 

 course, from Coldstream upwards, it has a high repu- 

 tation amongst the salmon streams of Scotland. Sal- 

 mon-fishing is not, however, altogether a public amuse- 

 ment seeing that salmon are private property, which 

 trout are not. No one has a right to catch the true 



