AND ANGLING SONGS. 93 



With water-hollows of this description, haunted by mysterious 

 trout, I have in my time formed a large acquaintance. There 

 are lots of them still to be met in the Lowlands of Scotland, but 

 there were more, a great many, when draining operations were 

 conducted on an inferior scale, and agricultural economy was 

 less studied than at present. One of them, the Linton Loch, in 

 Roxburghshire, as regards its revelations on being flushed dry 

 and thoroughly ransacked, might have furnished a large museum 

 with prominent objects of natural history. This water-hollow 

 formed the nucleus of a swamp lying in the vicinity of the How- 

 nam Hills, and appears to have been a place of fatal refuge to the 

 persecuted quarry of an age venatorial, far beyond that when 

 Scot and Southern held their contentions. There, deeply em- 

 bedded in marl, were found the remains of various animals, not 

 generally supposed to have been natives of Great Britain. Im- 

 mense horns, among others those of the reindeer, the skull of a 

 beaver, and bones of huge size, were taken out from a depth of 

 many feet. Above these, in connexion with the moss, lay vast 

 accumulations of hazel-nuts, and the remains of the trees from 

 which they had dropped. Up to a late period, trout of large 

 dimensions were said to occupy the reduced hollows of this 

 morass. A friend of mine managed to pick out three or four, 

 averaging from 1^ to 2 Ibs., but these were the pigmies of the 

 place ; the leviathans always managed to escape, and were left 

 to digest at leisure the cold iron they had so unceremoniously 

 carried off. 



My mode of dealing with haunts of this sort, such as in summer 

 become clogged with aquatic plants, and are seldom, where free 

 from such obstructions, acted on by the breeze, is very simple. 

 I use the casting-line which I would employ in angling with the 

 worm in clear water on Tweed, made up of seven or eight lengths 

 of fine round silk-worm gut, carefully double-knotted, but not 

 whipped over at the joinings. My hook, an Adlington round- 



