AND ANGLING SONGS. 145 



the Blackwater of Ross- shire is liable to be affected in a similar 

 manner. The fact of such alternations taking place, by sheer 

 force of nature, as it were, is certainly a curious one, and not 

 easily explained. 



As one of our Scottish salmon leaps, the Regie Falls merit 

 attention ; although on a smaller scale, they are quite as pictur- 

 esque as those of Kilmorack on the Beauly. It is chiefly during 

 the months of July and August that the fish are to be seen 

 attempting to climb them. In their endeavours to do so by the 

 main ascent, which is of a considerable height, they never, or rarely, 

 succeed ; but a lateral diversion, comprehending two distinct over- 

 shoots, separated, the upper from the lower, by a pot or caldron, 

 gives occasional opportunity for salmon to make good their way 

 into the higher range of river. By far the greater proportion, 

 however, of the fish which enter the Rasay, are content merely 

 to try their strength at the main cataract, and on being foiled, to 

 take up their quarters in the rugged shelter subtending it. 

 Thence, as they approach spawning condition, they drop down, 

 and congregate in the slack pools near the village of Contin. 

 From the glebe ground, an island formed by the Blackwater, 

 two miles below the Rogie Falls, there was pointed out to me, by 

 the late George Laidlaw (a knowing salmon-slayer with the spear 

 in his day and generation), one of these assemblages, comprising 

 several scores of black or foul fish, mostly females. The occu- 

 pancy in a similar manner of the pools in our Border river, pre- 

 paratory to the actual commencement of spawning operations, is 

 unquestionable. A hundred salmon and upwards have been 

 known to draw together within a small compass, for the pur- 

 pose apparently of concocting measures preliminary to their 

 appearance in a paired state on the superintending shallows. I 

 have frequently from Kelso Bridge witnessed gatherings of this 

 description. 



Reverting to the Falls of the Rogie : such salmon as overcome 



K 



