49 



Char of Loch Rannoch, who subsist almost entirely on the 

 daphnae pulix. The smelt, and some of the white fish also, 

 may be the link in the chain which will bind the land-locked 

 salmon to our northern lakes, and prove a very disturbing 

 weight in the scales on the side of the upper proprietors on 

 waters now tenanted by the migratory Salmonidae. I have 

 only just commenced the construction of a botanical pond 

 to enable me to study water plants as herbage for molluscae, 

 shelter for grammari, and the natural production of myriads 

 of ontromostrica. On the sea-shore of the Western High- 

 lands if the kelp be not regularly cut, or in other words 

 rudely cultivated, for cutting is most assuredly a process in 

 cultivation, the whelks and bukies decrease on account of 

 the want of the young tender shoots of seaweed, and the 

 fishing in the neighbourhood is sensibly diminished. 



From this it is easy to understand what a great future 

 may be opened out by the systematic culture of water 

 plants in our inland waters. 



Food limits the culture of non-migratory Salmonidae, 

 therefore our study must be where to grow it, how to grow 

 it, when to grow it, and what to grow. In lakes some 

 shoal swimming fish is essential to the growth of the large 

 species of non-migrating Salmonidae. Since the Char have 

 disappeared from Lochleven in the first quarter of the pre- 

 sent century, the ten pound Trout in that loch have passed 

 into the realms of romance. 



Acclimatization here steps in ; either the freshwater Smelt 

 of America or our own Osmerus eperlanus, which I have 

 successfully hatched and am now rearing in fresh water, 

 if introduced into a Highland loch, for instance, Loch Tay, 

 would enable it to carry a very heavy crop of some of the 

 larger inland species, for instance, the landlocked Salmon 

 of Loch Werner in Sweden, or the S. Sebago of America ; 



VOL. vi. C. E 



