AND ANGLING SONGS. 63 



vast discharge into a mere salmon-leap, and reduce the abyss 

 below, with its untiring and insatiable eddies, to the level of a 

 common fish-pond. 



On Monday, 6th July, I repaired to the margins of Loch Ness, 

 which are accessible a short way below the General's Hut, with 

 the intention of taking a few casts here and there where sport 

 seemed likely to be obtained, and proceeding in the course of 

 the afternoon to Inverness. The loch, when I commenced, was 

 under the influence of a good stiff breeze, which subsided gra- 

 dually as the day advanced, until, when I left off fishing, it had 

 arrived at a state of absolute calm. In mounting my tackle I 

 was encouraged as much by the success as by the advice of a 

 local angler, whom I came upon while in the act of landing a 

 dun salmon, to use flies of a larger description than what are 

 commonly employed by the trout-fisher. I find what was wont 

 to be designated in Edinburgh the Maule pattern, after the late 

 Mr. Maule, perhaps in his day and generation the most successful 

 angler in Scotland, set down in my journal as one of the lures 

 put to trial by me on that occasion. The wings of this old- 

 fashioned killer are formed of mottled turkey or florican feather ; 

 the body of dark-blue mohair, ribbed with silver-twist, and wound 

 over with a black-edged, brown hackle ; the tail-tip of orange 

 or brown-coloured wool, with a touch of speckled drake-feather 

 superadded. It was a special favourite on the river Awe at one 

 period, but has lost caste both there and elsewhere, like many of 

 our old standard Scottish patterns, on account of its primitive 

 appearance and the homeliness of the materials composing it. I 

 have described it as a salmon-fly, but, judged of by its dimen- 

 sions, the hook used by me was simply a large trouting one, or 

 loch-hook, No. 8 Adlington. In combination with the Maule fly 

 I employed the well-known magnet, the red Professor. With 

 these hooks, on the range of lake lying betwixt Inver-Farikaig 

 and the village of Dores, I did satisfactory execution, killing 



