MATURITY 151 



negotiating rocky cataracts, and even the bare breast-work of mill- 

 dams, in low water. I have seen them wriggling successfully up the 

 pitching of the apron of a dam when only a trickle of water ran between 

 the stones; and in one river, where a sloping wooden shoot is placed for 

 their convenience, I have seen them throw themselves on to the 

 boarding when it was no more than wet and scuttle up it by hugging the 

 angle at the side. They run, however, in greatest numbers in a falling 

 water after a spate, and I think they prefer to run then in sunlight. 



I cannot say what is the maximum perpendicular height that a sea- 

 trout will clear in its leap. Probably five feet is an outside limit, but 

 I fancy the powers of leaping of salmon and sea-trout are very similar 

 in this respect that they are both usually over-estimated. 



Many districts have a natural fall or a mill-dam where the fish can 

 be seen leaping in numbers at certain times of the year, and such places 

 are always an attraction to visitors, for there is something intensely 

 interesting in seeing the efforts of the fish to surmount the obstacle. 

 I reproduce here a photograph taken of a salmon leaping at a fall 

 (Fig. 50). Sea-trout leap in exactly the same way but the fish are too 

 small to be easily photographed. I think I have to thank Mr. H. W. 

 Johnston (indirectly through Mr. Hutton) for the photograph which 

 was taken, I understand, on the river Tummel. The Pot of Gartness, 

 a pool on the river Endrick, which flows westward through Stirlingshire 

 into the lower end of Loch Lomond, lies below a natural rocky 

 obstruction, and this forms one of the best-known " salmon leaps " in 

 the West of Scotland. Sea-trout and salmon both ascend it, but only 

 sea-trout ascend the mill-dam on Luss Water where there is often a 

 remarkable display of the leaping fish, many being in the air at one 

 time along the whole perpendicular face of the dam while the broken 

 water below is seething with others. I have spent many hours watching 

 the fish thus leaping, and have not the least doubt that before making 

 a leap at the obstacle sea-trout carefully take their bearings. If 



