150 AUTUMNS IN ARGYLESHIRE 



hole just below me, I suddenly tumbled on the 

 top of him, with about a ton of earth, which had 

 given way under my weight. I managed to keep 

 hold of the rod, but by the time I had regained 

 my footing in the water, and had got the point 

 upright again, he was seventy yards above me, 

 and had taken advantage of the slack line to get 

 round a clod or boulder and make his escape. I 

 can confidently recommend a labourer's allotment, 

 and a man upon it, thrown into the water, as a 

 means of moving a sulking fish, but the remedy 

 is a little violent. 



Much has been written by humanitarian senti- 

 mentalists on the cruelty of sport in general and 

 fishing in particular ; but I comfort myself in the 

 belief that the sense of feeling in fishes cannot 

 be acute. I have caught a sea-trout with a fly, 

 still bleeding from the fresh mark of a heron's 

 bill, which had transfixed it through the middle 

 of its body ; and it would be easy to multiply 

 instances of insensibility to pain. So, too, fish 

 seem to have extraordinary power of recovering 

 from the most severe injuries. I have taken a 

 salmon in the Tay with a scar on his side nearly 

 the size and depth of an ordinary tea-cup, quite 

 healed, and covered over with scales, evidently 

 the work of a seal in the estuary, and from the 

 growth of the fish it must have been done not 

 long before, at all events during the same year 

 and season. 



