AND ANGLING SONGS. 53 



hail of its fresh-water abode. There are circumstances in con- 

 nexion with many of our rivers which help to confirm this con- 

 viction. A very fair estimate of the quantity and quality of 

 sea-trout in a stream paying- direct tribute to ocean, may be 

 formed from the nature and arrangement of the estuary grounds 

 and their feeding accommodation. Rivers having in their vici- 

 nity an extensive tide-range, not acted on by heavy surfs, may be 

 judged of favourably. Such a tide-range usually teems with 

 those kinds of sustenance, animal and vegetable, which the sea- 

 trout, in order to bring them into condition, require, and which 

 may be said to be the ruling motive for their marine sojourn. 

 At low water, the sun acts powerfully towards the production of 

 such sustenance ; and where scarcely any disturbance of the sea- 

 bed takes place, the supply of food is usually so abundant as to 

 obviate all necessity for the trout moving off in quest of it to 

 other quarters. Of the river, or rather the estuary provision, I 

 speak of, I could adduce many exemplifications ; but the contrast, 

 in the case of two rivers dissimilarly provided at the mouth or 

 entrance, will be sufficiently set forth when I name the Laxford, 

 in Sutherlandshire, and its neighbour the Inver, merely remark- 

 ing, that the well-known superiority of the former, as a conduit 

 for sea-trout, can be accounted for on no other grounds. 



The Nairn water, which I have taken for my text, is peculiarly, 

 I do not say richly, endowed with the provision in question. The 

 features presented by the coast-line stretching south of the river 

 are somewhat striking. The eye is carried towards a range of 

 sand-hills, which tradition asserts were built up in the course of 

 a single tempestuous night over a tract of land occupied pre- 

 viously by flourishing farms and their homesteads. Betwixt these 

 barren eminences and the river's mouth, the tide-range, which is 

 extensive, discovers at low water a series of lagoons, or salt-water 

 dubs, where cockles, shrimps, small flounders, etc., are found in 

 abundance. From these, no doubt, the sea-trout and finnocks 



