1 62 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



pugnacity, were divided into small detachments or families, con- 

 sisting each of about a score of individuals, and having severally 

 their heads or leaders, which were distinguished from the others, 

 as well by their size as by their guiding position in front of the 

 shoal. 



The three-spined rough-tailed stickleback, according to Mr. 

 Yarrell, is one of the most common of our British fishes. He 

 assigns it a habitat in almost every river, brook, or lake in the 

 kingdom ; also in the salt water, and on the whole of the coast- 

 line stretching from the Land's End to the Orkneys. Without 

 disputing Mr. Yarrell's accuracy, or the correctness of his sources 

 of information on this point, I may venture to affirm that there 

 are numbers of our Scottish streams and lakes out of which the 

 naturalist would have some difficulty in extracting even a single 

 specimen. Certainly, in none of the waters with which I am 

 acquainted, lying north of the Grampian range, has this fish 

 ever pressed itself on my observation, as it did in Loch Achilty 

 on the occasion above mentioned. As a substitute for the 

 minnow, which is not found in the eastern division of Scotland 

 north of Morayshire, nor in the western districts north of Loch 

 Awe, I have frequently looked for it, but rarely could detect its 

 presence, except in connexion with ditches or stagnant by-water, 

 in places, in fact, where it could be of no immediate service 

 to me. Its existence in Loch Achilty I have brought under 

 notice, because it struck me as in some measure singular, and 

 because also there was something peculiar in the movements and 

 habits of the stickleback in that lake which I never saw exhibited 

 elsewhere. Had this little fish been a stranger to me, I could 

 not speak so decidedly as to the peculiarity in question, but it 

 happens to be a finny acquaintance of very old standing, and one 

 which, on Tweedside and elsewhere, I have constant opportunities 

 of falling in with. I recollect it, in my boyhood, living in the 

 ditches of what was called the Nor' Loch, in the heart of Edin- 



