AND ANGLING SONGS. 



up to that standard of perfection arrived at by the trout of many 

 of our Highland lakes. As to size, they range generally from 

 a quarter of a pound up to a pound. I twice, near Bourhope, 

 exactly at the same spot, and after an interval of more than 

 twenty years, caught a yellow trout upwards of three pounds ; 

 but these (the last was taken in August 1853, and turned the 

 scale at three and a half pounds) were the largest specimens of 

 the loch trout that ever came under my regard. The Meggat, 

 which, although it enters laterally, is the principal feeder of the 

 lake, used to yield trout of a pound and a half; and from the 

 Yarrow, its discharge, I have educed still heavier ones. Yarrow, 

 however, although it retains its classic interest, and flows appa- 

 rently as unsullied as ever, has lost, I fear, much of its old repute 

 as an angling stream. My last visit to it was paid recently (15th 

 June 1865), on which occasion, having scrutinized it narrowly 

 the whole way down, I felt mortified to find, the more especially 

 as the discovery was one which jarred with associations of an 

 agreeable nature, that neither in size nor appearance, nor in 

 respect to numbers, are the trout of Yarrow what they used to 

 be. The old breed of ' y allow fins,' as the Ettrick Shepherd 

 used to call them, individuals belonging to which breed, of the 

 weight of three pounds, it was not uncommon for the fly-fisher to 

 fall in with, has apparently died out, or become so crossed with 

 inferior varieties that it is questionable whether a pure specimen 

 survives. With my annual visits to Tibby's cottage, I usually 

 combined a stroll across the hills to the vale of the Ettrictj which 

 lies at a distance of about four miles from the lochs. Unlike 

 Yarrow, this river retains its repute as an angling stream. In 

 1860, and still more recently, my friend Wilson and I, in the 

 neighbourhood of Crosslee and Thirlstane, took some good 

 baskets out of it, graced with trout of more than a pound weight. 

 Some of the burns which flow into Ettrick the Timah and 

 Rankle burn particularly, swarm with small trout. These hill 



