AND ANGLING SONGS. 4/ 



not much inferior to what it was in July, and that the section of 

 the river occupied by them did not extend more than a couple of 

 miles from the sea. 



In these particulars, namely, the condition of this little fish in 

 September, and to some extent, the limited range of their inland 

 migrations, a correspondence may be detected betwixt the habits 

 of the Nairn finnock and the Tweed black-tail, or silver-white. 

 They are very similar in appearance also, save that the black-tail 

 carries the palm in point of size. When I came to make a com- 

 parison, however, of the finnock of this river (and I may add, the 

 finnock of the Brora and Fleet in Sutherlandshire, which I had 

 an opportunity of examining near the close of the season in 

 1850), with the small white trout of the Solway Firth, called 

 indiscriminately the bill, the herling, and the whiten (the term 

 whiten is the one usually applied to it at Carlisle), such points 

 of resemblance no longer present themselves ; the bills or her- 

 lings of the Esk, in Dumfriesshire, for instance, parting with their 

 condition early in August, and venturing up, not merely the 

 main river, but, like the erioces, distributing themselves over its 

 tributaries at a distance of twenty miles and upwards from the 

 salt water for the purpose of spawning. 



At the opening of the season 1837, I renewed my attention to 

 the white trout of the Nairn. During February and March, the 

 heavier proportion of the fish landed by me consisted of whitling 

 and grilse kelts. Mixed up with these, however, and forming 

 one of the chief inducements to fish, were numbers of clean, well- 

 conditioned finnocks, which, to all appearance, had very recently 

 quitted the salt water ; some of them, those taken below the 

 Cauld Dyke, near to which the sea extended its influence, con- 

 tinuing to be acted on by the ebb and flow of the tide. I cer- 

 tainly caught among the spent trout several that were, or had 

 been apparently finnocks or yearling fish ; but whether the alter- 

 ation in their condition had proceeded from mere confinement 



