82 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



Almond, and thence to Loch Freuchie, and when residing at 

 Comrie House spent a day or two in exercise with my rod on 

 Loch Earn, near St. Fillans. The upper ranges of Loch Earn 

 I previously had laid under contribution in 1831. With Loch 

 Freuchie, which is held in such high esteem by some of my 

 angling friends, I was disappointed. It may, however, have 

 greatly improved with respect to the size of its trout since that 

 time, the netting, which was then regularly carried on, being now 

 either done away with, or put under restrictions. The Loch 

 Earn trout, also, such as are to be taken near the margins in 

 summer, disappointed me in regard to their dimensions. Large 

 fellows are now and then secured by the troller, but to bring 

 such up to the scratch requires more perseverance than the 

 sport they afford when hooked is really worth. There is some 

 fine-looking preserved water, m the shape both of natural and 

 artificial lakes or ponds, near Crieff, on the estates of Drummond 

 Castle, Ochtertyre, and Abercairney, which I never had the 

 opportunity of throwing a line over. 



The name of Abercairney leads me back to the incidents of a 

 day passed with the then chieftain, the late James Moray, Esq., 

 lineal representative of the Earls of Strathearn, at one of his 

 shooting-lodges, located on the heights betwixt Monzie and Glen- 

 Almond. Abercairney was a Celt to the back- bone, and rarely, 

 if ever, hunting days excepted, exchanged the kilt for the trews. 

 In his younger days he had journeyed on foot all over Italy, and 

 penetrated into the wildest recesses of Calabria, under protection 

 of his motley garb and a set of bagpipes, gaining the hearts and 

 hospitalities of the brigand peasantry through the medium of 

 strathspeys and pibrochs. With all his peculiarities and High- 

 land prejudices, the chief, for he acknowledged no surname, and 

 to be addressed as Mr. Moray brought the fire to his eye and the 

 taunt to his tongue, was a man of highly cultivated tastes. As 

 a connoisseur in fine -art productions, he was looked up to with 



