PRESTMA^NAN. 35 



and Lady C., myself, and several others. Four of the party, at 

 least, were anglers ; and so, next morning, we fished the artificial 

 Lake of Prestmannan, into which, some years ago, the beauteous 

 trout of Loch Leven had been introduced. Under circumstances 

 highly disadvantageous, they throve, notwithstanding, tolerably 

 well, and even bred at the entrance of a small stream which 

 mainly supplies the lake. But what surprised me most was the 

 being told that the trout in this pond (for the sheet of water 

 deserves no oner name) rise very readily to an artificial fly 

 of rather larger size than is used in river fishing. In an hour, 

 thereafter, I fished the pond ; we were a partie quaree in two 

 boats : General Fergusson, and Colonel Fergusson in one, Sir 

 Benjamin Hall and I were in the other. The trout rose readily 

 to the artificial fly as General Fergusson had told me they 

 would ; and they bit freely, so that we caught many fine trout 

 under circumstances so adverse to the general belief as to the 

 habits of the trout, and its natural timidity, that I could not 

 but express my surprise thereat. Here were the fine trout, the 

 descendants of those from Loch Leven, living in a pond, 

 thriving and breeding, and caught so readily with an artificial 

 fly ; the angler being unassisted by wind or rain, or stream, 

 as if by growing up in this pond they had forgotten that they 

 were trout, whose forefathers had lived in the ample wide- 

 spread waters of Leven Lake, their little ocean, with choice 

 of food, in spring and winter, the delicate entoprostacea 

 bringing them into the highest condition, at a season when 

 other trout are unfit as food for man ; the abundant buccinum 

 a small whelk, but not at all microscopic, supplying them 

 copiously during the greater part of summer, and, lastly, as a 

 never-failing resource, flies, worms, codbait, screws, beetles, and 

 the multifarious living things, forming the usual food of the 

 common trout, whether he be found in lake or river. 



Dinner came, and we discussed the nature of salmon and 

 trout, and sea-trout, and parr, and especially the nature of the 

 trout now before us. I had heard and mentioned the circumstance 

 to Sir R. F., an excellent angler and brave soldier, that in Loch 

 Leven itself the trout could not be so caught with fly or bait. He, 

 on the other hand, assured me that his nephews had fished Loch 



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