16 FISHING GOSSIP. 



youth to manhood with Burns I might literally 



say 



" We twa ha'e paidelt in the burn, 



Frae morning sun till dine ; 

 But seas between us braid ha'e roared, 

 Sin' auld lang syne" 



and never observed a single trait of the defamatory 

 character with which he has been branded in syste- 

 matic works. On the contrary, we shall see pre- 

 sently that he is quite an epicure in diet, and playful 

 as a kitten on his own domestic hearth. In no stage 

 of his existence can he well be confounded with his 

 cousins of the river. Even in his infancy there is a 

 breadth and freedom of outline in his configuration, 

 which distinguish him at once from relatives of the 

 same age in brook or streamlet. When viewed play- 

 ing at their favourite game of entomology, one of 

 them exhibits a promise of future expansion never 

 presented by the other. Not but that the latter, 

 under favourable circumstances, is capable of reach- 

 ing a considerable weight and size ; but the larger he 

 grows the less he really resembles the Great Lake 

 type. His increase is lateral rather than longitud- 

 inal, as if the vertebras refused to be parties in the 

 process ; and I have seen quadrilateral monsters of 

 this kind taken in small bog-lakes, which weighed 

 from 9 Ibs. to 10 Ibs., though not more than a dozen 

 or fifteen inches long. But they were nasty tenchy 



