

HIGHLAND STREAMS. 31 



stated, to the trout frequenting a large number of our 

 Scottish streams, both main rivers and their tributaries, 

 and, with such modifications as are imposed upon them 

 through some peculiarity in the feeding afforded by this 

 or that water, may be held as of general application. 

 When the feeding supplied by a stream or burn falls 

 I am talking of quantity only below the average, trout 

 seldom attain to more than a quarter of a pound in 

 weight. They may abound in numbers, but these, in 

 general, are lank, large-headed fish, that give little or 

 no sport. Many of our Highland streams are of the 

 description above mentioned. They have no winter 

 supply of food at all. They travel, at least half their 

 course, over rocks. Their banks have undergone little 

 or no tillage. They are incapable of receiving it. 

 Here, like the channel itself, they are solid rock; there, 

 they are the debris of the torrent; sometimes they 

 present to the eye a fringe of heather; sometimes a 

 miry swamp ; sometimes a forest nurtured by its own 

 sheddings; seldom do they give indication of being 

 supplied, during a flood, with loam or rich soil, yielding 

 insects and their deposits; but, on the contrary, the 

 occurrence of a winter spate only despoils their courses 

 of such unappropriated aliment as found lodgement 

 therein during the summer months. Such, along the 

 greater portion of its career, is the Dee; such are the 

 Coe and the Spean; such, also, are many of the 

 mountain feeders in Perthshire, Inverness-shire, Aber- 

 deenshire ; in fact, throughout the northern highlands 

 of Scotland. Hence we find the trout inhabiting them 

 dwarfish in size, lean, and unhealthy. Even in the 

 course of summer, when insect food is tolerably abun- 

 dant, they make little improvement) and seldom do we 

 see them encroached upon by varieties from neighbour- 



