VARIOUS TESTS 185 



found to agree upon the matter. I remember 

 well my own first experience with such a fish, 

 many years ago upon Loch Awe. Rowing 

 down to the ' Crow Island ' a short thick hand- 

 some trout of some 5 or 6 Ibs. weight was 

 caught, and at lunch time on the Island it be- 

 came the subject of animated debate among the 

 boatmen there assembled ; but the question was 

 set at rest at least to their satisfaction by the 

 dictum of the oldest, who pronounced it to be 

 most certainly a 'ferok,' * because it had five 

 large black spots on the gill-covers.' It seems 

 to have come to this on some Highland lochs, 

 that any trout above a certain weight caught by 

 trolling must be a ferox ; if caught on a fly it is 

 a 4 trout/ But apparently the necessity of some 

 considerable weight is now abandoned ; for a 

 ferox of i^ Ibs. has before now been recorded, 

 and in a recent report from Lairg six ferox 

 weighing together 1 5^ Ibs. are mentioned. 



The most convincing proof to me, however, 

 is that it has been my experience to see the 

 great so-called ferox developed in a few years 

 from the insignificant fingerling- trout of a High- 

 land hill burn. Just thirty years ago a party of 

 anglers found themselves, as was their wont, 

 on a summer holiday in Sutherland ; and the 

 weather being too fine for fishing, it was resolved 



