FAREWELL FEAST OF ANGLING CLUB. 187 



Otter. I had as lief, Doctor, thou hadst left thy stave 

 unsung ; it hath troubled the strings of my affections. 

 Ah ! I shall never visit Yarrow any more, not 

 because its breed of yellow-fins is now extinct and 

 well might they be so for the waters of that stream 

 have been harrowed without mercy, sifted and ran- 

 sacked by every species of ingenuity, down from 

 Douglas-burn-foot to the bridge at Broad-meadows, and 

 farther perhaps; but farther we never angled, although 

 often, from Newark Tower to that of the wizard Sir 

 Michael Scott at Oakwood, have we trodden, along the 

 1 lirchen braes of the silvery river. Its yellow-fins are 

 indeed departed ! the huge, thick-shaped, golden- 

 flanked fellows, that were wont to be caught in the 

 May month, during glints of the sun on a warm rainy 

 morning. They loved best the clear, shining minnow, 

 or sometimes a yellow-bodied fly, with a rough red 

 hackle twisted round it ; but of these, the minnow was 

 the more captivating lure; it brought out the daintest 

 fish from their retreats, and spun so enchantingly down 

 the primes t streams that, troutless as one knew many 

 of these to be, there was still a delight, difficult to 

 forego, in playing among them its tiny form. The 

 Yarrow yellow-fins were ever famous, and an unfre- 

 <juent specimen may to this day be taken, but only one, 

 out of some scores of gray, lean, loch trout, or of 

 the big-bellied variety found in Tweed. It was, in 

 truth, a lovely fish, ornate with a rare sprinkling 

 of stars, darker than crimson, and these on a light 



