TRANSPLANTING OF TROUT. 39 



court, which in fact amounted to this, that the more the lake 

 was drained the more the trout would thrive and multiply. 

 Lawyers dislike science and scientific men. 1 really do not ex- 

 actly know what they believe, in, since to them every question 

 has two sides. But in the case I allude to, the quasi naturalist 

 amateur was not a scientific man but a dabbler in scientific 

 terms. The mischief these persons have done to true science is 

 incalculable ; the more ability they have the worse it is. 



Trout, and more especially as it has seemed to me the finer 

 kinds, will live and even thrive as I have just proved, in local- 

 ities apparently unsuitable for life, and where the coarsest kind, 

 the common river trout of Scotland, for example, would surely 

 perish. Thus, in the artificial lake in East Lothian, called 

 Prestmannan, the Leven trout transferred to its rmKhty confined 

 waters from the crystal wide- spreading Lake of Leven continue, 

 as we have proved, to breed and to thrive tolerably well, whilst 

 river trout soon die in the same locality. 



On one occasion, it is true, about 120 dozen of these trans- 

 ported Leven trout floated at once to the surface, dead. I had 

 this fact from the gamekeeper himself, who also added that he 

 could never discover any cause for so sudden and frightful a 

 mortality. But those which remained survived the pestilence, 

 whatever it might be, and again restocked the pond. 



No pond or lake was ever, I think, constructed on worse prin- 

 ciples as a fishpond, than this said lake of Prestmannan, and on 

 examining it, it occurred to me that if the Leven trout could 

 live and thrive there, as is the case, it might do so almost any- 

 where. 



But very fine red spotted river trout are caught in the dam 

 head of the water of Leith, at Colt Bridge, a locality in which it 

 is difficult to believe that any trout or fish could live, yet the 

 fact is certain. I have moreover seen abundance of very fine 

 red spotted trout caught in a small stream which drains the 

 valley of Kilburne, in Derbyshire, a stream into which the 

 refuse water of several coal pits is poured in such quantities as 

 to blacken the entire stream. Yet but for poachers the trout in 

 this rivulet would be numerous. They are of excellent quality. 

 All these facts prove the practicability of greatly multiplying 



