7(5 FISH AXD FISHING IX SCOTLAND. 



short, that when, by the flowing of the tide, our fishing was 

 stopped for the day, it seemed but an hour. It was much more ; 

 and the contents of a long range of river, of an interesting cha- 

 racter, were thus unexpectedly disclosed to me. Here I could 

 observe Nature as she acted, untrammelled by human hands, 

 human experiments. It was an hour I look back to with delight : 

 for to discover the unknown, a new truth in science, a new 

 relation of observed phenomena, has ever afforded me the most 

 intense pleasure. 



The opinion of the tacksman amounted to this, that min- 

 nows are simply minnows, and do not grow into any other 

 kind of fish : that parrs are parrs, hirling simply hirling, and 

 that salmon-trout and salmon are fishes perfectly distinct. But 

 of the trout found in the river, of two kinds, as already remarked, 

 he had a theory, which was this : 



At the distance of a mile or two from the south-western bank 

 of the river, where we then stood, pleasantly discussing the 

 point, there is a small lake, in which are found the so-much- 

 prized pink-coloured lake trout that is, trout with the muscles 

 or flesh tinged like salmon. "Sometimes, no doubt," he re- 

 marked, " some of these trout make their way into the Nith, 

 "by the small streams through which are discharged the surplus 

 waters of the lake, and having once got into the river, they 

 cannot return to the lake, by reason of the falls in the stream." 

 This was his theory. I doubt its correctness. 



In the lower part of the Tyne (see Chapter II.), from the 

 bridge to Tyningham Sands, in East Lothian, I had already 

 found a pink-coloured red-spotted trout, of exquisite flavour- 

 habits and food peculiar ; and this same trout, as appeared to me, 

 exists also in the tidal portion of the Nith. Of this peculiar kind 

 of fish I have already said enough. I have elsewhere called it 

 the Estuary Trout,* meaning by this name simply to express 

 a fact that it is taken only in those parts of rivers into which 

 the tide ebbs and flows. Besides, lake trout have dark spots, 

 whilst the trout I speak of had red spots, like those of the estuary 

 of the Tyne. I state this latter fact from memory, without a 

 reference to my notes, but I believe it will be found correct. 



* MS. 



