THE GALA ON FAST-DAYS. 131 



the six-feet-two form of Mr. W. C. Stewart, the best 

 angler in Edinburgh. When the train reaches the head 

 of Gala- water, at every station a cloud of witnesses to 

 the love of angling prevailing in the metropolis drops 

 off; and although a few of the angling passengers pass 

 Bowland, intent upon the " Nest," the pools of Kuther- 

 ford, or the streams of Mertoun, the green valley for 

 the day becomes populous, and the trout that dwell 

 therein are amazed by the rapid succession of leashes 

 of new and strange-looking entoma that float past 

 them. There is no stream that has such railway facili- 

 ties as the Gala. On about fifteen miles of its course 

 there are no fewer than five stations, every one on its 

 very banks. 



Luckily the Gala is most abundantly stocked with 

 the river-trout; and notwithstanding the numbers of 

 those who cast angles in it, there is no prospect of a 

 serious falling off. It must be confessed that a great 

 proportion of the metropolitan anglers who resort to it 

 do not seriously reduce its population, and a census 

 taken the day after the Edinburgh fast-day would pro- 

 bably find only a few hundred fish amissing as com- 

 pared with the day previous to that solemn occasion. 

 Mr. Stewart states that the Gala is fished by about 

 thirty anglers daily during the season, and " supposing 

 they average only two pounds a-piece," he thereby 

 makes out the capture of an immense number of trout. 

 If we take the fish as averaging five to the pound 

 which approximates to the size of the trouts taken by 

 fly in small streams we have thus a destruction of 

 300 per diem ; and supposing it to continue over a 

 hundred days in the year, the " total casual ties " would 



