SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 37 



effected his purpose. A writer on the subject* has truly 

 observed, 



" The exertions which salmon are known to make to overcome 

 obstructions in their passage up rivers are truly surprising. To 

 those who are admirers of the wonderful works of the Author of 

 Nature, no sight can be more gratifying than to observe salmon 

 ascending torrents, and throwing themselves up rocks of such a 

 height as no other fish would attempt. A singular instance of this 

 is to be seen in North America, at the great Bellows Falls, where 

 the fishermen hang arm-chairs, secured by a counterpoise, and catch 

 the salmon as they spring. In the early part of my life, I have, 

 with pleasure not to be described, stood for hours together viewing 

 the salmon when in floods, facing the passage of a waterfall called 

 the Keth, in the river Ench, a tributary stream of the Tay. This 

 rock is about fourteen feet high when the water is low, but in floods 

 not so much. At this time the strength of man could not resist the 

 Current, while they, with considerable facility, make over it. They 

 sometimes fail in their first essays, but, undismayed, and with an 

 unremitting ardour, they renew the attempt, till they prevail in 

 clearing it." 



After they reach the rivers, salmon, as before remarked, like 

 herrings, after they come upon our coasts, seem to require very 

 little food: for the few worms that are washed down from the 

 adjacent grounds, and the flies which flutter on the water, are 

 next to nothing. In the sea they feed well, whole herrings, as 

 we have said, being often found in their stomachs : if they 

 required anything like the same quantity of food in the fresh 

 water, Nature must have filled the rivers with worms, or other 

 insects, to such a degree as to become a nuisance and pollute 

 the water : but instead of this, the streams are pure, and the 

 stomachs of the fish are so constituted as to extract the neces- 

 sary sustenance almost wholly out of the water itself. Accord- 

 ingly, nothing is almost ever found in the stomach of a salmon 

 killed in a river. That salmon rise to a fly, is true ; but let any 

 man examine the fly, and see how little food there is in it, or 

 let him watch the river, and see how seldom salmon rise to or 

 catch at flies. In a pool containing a score of salmon he will 

 n<>t, perhaps, see one rise to a natural fly in four-and-twenty 



* Prize Essays. 



