THE SALMON. 133 



permitted ; as but few known resting places escape being swept 

 daily by nets, and unless from the inaccessible nature of the ground, 

 it rarely happens that the salmon are long permitted to remain in 

 peaceable possession of their' quarters. Some places there are 

 where the scan cannot be used, but even there the spear or dip net 

 are resorted to. A remarkable place of this kind at the Keith of 

 Blairgowrie, is mentioned in the British Naturalist. 



The river there, which in times of drought is so narrow that an 

 active man might easily leap over it, the waters after a fall of about 

 thirteen feet, discharging themselves into the pool below, have 

 hollowed out a deep and circular well of thirty feet deep, in which 

 during the continuance of dry weather, the salmon, for want of a 

 sufficient supply of water to achieve the ascent, accumulate in 

 such numbers, that in a favourable state of the light they may be 

 seen, not merely covering the extent from bide to side, but ac- 

 tually built as it were one stratum above another, all hanging 

 suspended in the water, and waiting till a flood by overflowing the 

 whole bed should convert the narrow gorge into a broad rapid, 

 over which they may then ascend. Great numbers, the same 

 learned writer observes, are caught there by a bag net on the end 

 of a very long pole, which is plunged into the water until the net 

 is supposed to be further down than the salmon, when it is moved 

 laterally out of the place where it was plunged and drawn to the 

 surface, and generally with success, though it seems the pursuit is 

 attended with some danger on account of the slippery nature of the 

 rocks ; added to which, the fishers having to overhang the rocks 

 to obtain the best fishing, are sometimes thrown off their balance 

 by the struggles of the fish and precipitated into the abyss, from 

 which escape is very difficult, even for the most expert swimmer to 

 effectuate his escape. 



Salmon ascend different rivers although within a very short dis- 

 tance from each other, at different seasons of the year ; and are 

 in good condition in the one, when they are utterly worthless as 

 an article of food in another, and this even where they all discharge 

 themselves into the same estuary, which is a circumstance so well 

 known in these localities, that the fence days have been extended 

 in those rivers the fish are in the habit of ascending late in the 

 year, allowing them to be fished after it becomes unlawful to do 

 so in the more early waters of the neighbourhood, as occurs with 

 respect to the river Plym, which with the Tamar discharges itself 



