350 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



mation as to have become a subject of demand in the home 

 market. No attempt that I am aware of has ever been made to 

 give it a place on the stall of the fishmonger, or bring it in a 

 potted state into competition with the scanty and often counter- 

 feit produce of the Lake district. The lochs which contain 

 these fish are numerous, but they are located, almost all of them, in 

 the heart of the moor or the deer-forest, and there has as yet been 

 shown little desire, on the part of their owners, to convert them 

 from their sporting uses, and make profit of their contents. In 

 respect to lochs which actually yield sport, this unwillingness 

 to change their character is highly commendable, but there are 

 many large stretches of water in the Scottish Highlands which 

 will admit of being termed superfluous, lying idle from year to 

 year, unvisited by the angler. Not a few of these, which teem 

 with charr and trout of the finest quality, might be turned to 

 account, and made to supply, lawfully and sufficiently, a gap in 

 our market produce, which at present is being precariously filled 

 up by, and gives encouragement to, the exertions of poachers. 



I have associated these remarks on our Scottish charr with the 

 Lake district of England, as the repute attached to the Salmo 

 alpinus is bound up with that portion of our island, and it was 

 but natural to link to it the acquaintance I have formed with this 

 beautiful fish in a latitude slightly more northern. The standard 

 size, I may notice, ascribed by Mr. Yarrell to the charr, although 

 correct as applied to the produce of Windermere itself, has, I 

 think, been a little overrated. From eight to ten inches may 

 be held as the average length of this fish in Scotland, and such 

 specimens as that possessed by the late laborious ichthyologist, 

 measuring eighteen inches in length, are, as far as I can ascer- 

 tain, very rarely to be met with. An individual two feet long, 

 the size which it is said occasionally to attain, taken from any 

 of our charr lakes, would form a most valuable curiosity in a 

 first-class collection of our British fishes. 



