48 FISH AND FISHING IN SCOTLAND. 



namely, that at one part of its course a fall exists too high for the 

 salmon to overleap. 



Let us return to the Forth. 



As we sailed briskly along, chatting pleasantly with various 

 friends, whom you are almost sure to meet on the deck of a 

 steam-boat, time passed agreeably enough. Some one or other 

 knows the coast, the hills, the mansions, the people. We met 

 an old schoolfellow, a most worthy man, now a lawyer, and in 

 office. Amongst various things we talked off, he put this odd 

 question to me Why is it now that recruiting officers are 

 directed to look at the form and appearance of the hands of all 

 offering themselves as recruits ? I explained to him that without 

 pretending to know the precise reason, or all the reasons for such 

 an order, there still were some obvious enough ; such as the size 

 of the hands of the recruits, which, if small, unfitted the recruit 

 from readily handling his musket ; and again, a small hand im- 

 plies a luxurious disposition and a dislike to continued labour, 

 the " labor improbus" which overcomes all things. As we con- 

 versed I used my own hand as a demonstration of some points of 

 our discourse ; he put forward his also, but instantly drew it back 

 in consternation. He had never looked at his hand before. Like 

 many human hands it was scarcely human ; long, muscular, spa- 

 tular-shaped fingers ; vast breadth of palm, thumb-joint and 

 other joints standing out at right angles ; nails indescribable. 

 He saw the whole at a glance. And now followed a discourse on 

 form and on beauty, which carried us back to the glorious age of 

 Greece, opened up a new world to the vision of my friend, who 

 then learned what neither Blackstone nor Coke upon Lyttleton 

 could have taught him, the laws, namely, which regulate the 

 formation and the deformation of the human form ; of the abso- 

 lutely beautiful and the conventionally so. 



By this time we had reached Stirling, and at once took to the 

 road for Callender, eschewing all 'coaches, horses, and gigs. But 

 marching through a level fertile country does not restore the 

 energy of the body and elasticity of mind, which a bold sally 

 through a mountain district temporarily does. The high road, 

 too, savours too much of a town of commonplace Highgate, 

 Hammersmith, and the Borough. But the angler must not 



