THE ELUSIVE QUARRY 37 



rare occasions they incline to rise. The rarity of 

 rises most fishermen will admit ; but at present that 

 is not exactly the subject. What we have to con- 

 sider is whether salmon are as slothful as Dr. Barton 

 assumes. Are they ? Does each fish, when it 

 arrives from the sea, find a holt to which he is as 

 devoted as the trout is to his hover? It chances 

 that, at the instance of Mr. Augustus Grimble, an ob- 

 servant sportsman of much experience, this question 

 has been the subject of an enlightening discussion. 

 Mr. Grimble doubted the accepted understand- 

 ing that salmon, when they run into the rivers, quit 

 the sea for months, and ultimately became con- 

 vinced that the suspicion was justified. The evidence 

 was derived from what happens in a West-of-Scotland 

 stream. Often during the season there is very little 

 water, and not a salmon is to be seen ; but when the 

 rains come upon the mountains the stream swells and 

 salmon swarm. Where were the fish in the time of 

 drought? Mr. Grimble could not but think that 

 they had dropped down the stream. A gillie who 

 knows the water well bore picturesque witness 

 encouraging to this conjecture. Until 1850, when 

 the Fishery Board began to do its duty, the cottagers 

 were wont to take enormous baskets of salmon and 

 sea-trout from that stream, and the means of capture 

 which they used showed that they too held the 

 theory broached by Mr. Grimble. They built " an 

 oblique but not high dyke of stones across the river, 

 which they repaired as each spate damaged it. They 

 were fully alive to the fact that the fall of the water, 



