41 



As the angler traverses this district from Edin- 

 burgh up the Firth, he will pass through a very 

 fertile carse, with a distant view of the Grampians, 

 from Ben-Lomond to Uam Yar, and a nearer one of 

 the Ochills, to the ferry opposite Alloa, where there 

 is a crossing over the Eirth, just at the point where 

 it changes from a river to an inlet of the sea. It is 

 evident that the country in this neighbourhood is 

 part of a vast coal formation, distinguished from 

 those of England by the absence of the two forma- 

 tions of mountain and magnesian limestone, between 

 which the coal fields of England generally occur, 

 and by the extreme number and magnitude of the 

 beds and veins of secondary trap, which certainly 

 have all the appearance of having been forced up 

 from below by volcanic action. Above Carron and 

 Alloa, on the banks of the Devon, the clay iron ore 

 is particularly abundant, and affords employment to 

 many thousands of industrious and ingenious work- 

 men. 



The Devon is an interesting stream to angle, not 

 for the quantity of its trout, but for the interesting 

 and picturesque scenery of its banks. Near to Dol- 

 lar is the famous Caldron Linn. Here the river is 

 contracted into a narrow chasm, over which men 

 accustomed to the feat, have not unfrequently leaped. 

 It then falls about twenty feet, into a caldron of 

 rock, passes with great violence into a second and a 

 third, and then falls about forty feet into the plain 

 below. Hence we proceed to what is called the 

 Rumbling Bridge, where the river forces its way 



