92 WILD NATURE IN STRATHEARN. 



To preserve trout in lochs and ponds that 

 big baskets may be made, and duly chronicled 

 in the newspapers, is not sport, but, like pheasant- 

 rearing, it is fashionable, and gives employment 

 to men. Sir Herbert Maxwell refers to this in 

 " Memoirs of the Months " as follows : " Un- 

 luckily the killing of trout has been made in 

 Scotland a matter of prize-winning. Almost 

 daily is the sacred bosom of Loch Leven dese- 

 crated by this ignoble rivalry ; and the hallowed 

 founts of Ettrick and Yarrow are incessantly 

 ransacked with an ardour certainly not born of 

 the sport offered by the wretched fishlets creeled. 

 In many districts the open fishings are rendered 

 worthless to fair anglers by the miserable snigglers 

 who destroy gravid and unseasonable fish all 

 through the winter months." To the ordinary 

 mind trout would have little fascination for the 

 poacher, unless he were to poison or net them, 

 and that can only be done in certain streams 

 and at certain places. 



But is the poacher a mere mercenary individual 



