364 A Walk from 



eye, the finest in Scotland, each being about a mile 

 and a half in circumference, and making delightful 

 and healthy playgrounds and promenades for the whole 

 population. 



On Monday, Sept. llth, I took staff and set out for 

 another week-stage of my walk, or from Perth to 

 Inverness. Crossed the Tay and proceeded northward 

 up the east side of that fertile river. Fertile may 

 sound at first a singular qualification for a broad, rapid 

 stream running down out of the mountains and widen- 

 ing into a bay or firth at its mouth. But it may be 

 applied in the best sense of production to the Tay ; and 

 not only that, but other terms known to practical agri- 

 culture. Up to the present moment, no river in the 

 world has been cultivated with more science and success. 

 None has been sown so thickly with seed-vitalities or 

 produced more valuable crops of aquatic life. Here 

 salmon are hatched by hand and folded and herded 

 with a shepherd's care. Here pisciculture, or, to use a 

 far better and more euphonious word, fish-farming, is 

 carried to the highest perfection in Great Britain. It 

 is a tillage that must hereafter take its place with 

 agriculture as a great and honored industry. If the 

 cold, bald-headed mountains, the wild, stony reaches of 

 poverty-stricken regions, moor, morass, steppe and 

 prairie are made the pasturage of sheep innumerable, 



