THE TWEED AT DRYBURGH. 283 



the Abbey grounds, occurs a short cast called the 

 Throat, the inclination of whose casual occupants to 

 favour the salmon-fisher is usually determined in the 

 course of half-a-dozen throws. Above the Throat, at 

 a fascinating pace, ambles the Burn Stream. From 

 both of these holes I have educed salares in the shape 

 of well-mended kelts. It is rarely indeed that any- 

 thing better nowadays is to be got out of them. 

 The shallows below the Throat, however, and those 

 heading the Burn Stream, abound in fine trout ; and 

 in the worm-fishing season that is in June and the 

 early part of July, after the starry-sides have had 

 their surfeit of winged insects I recur to them annu- 

 ally, as places associated with sport of a first-rate 

 character. It is not always, however, on such occa- 

 sions that I have had the good fortune to find the 

 trout in a taking humour or when they are so, to 

 secure to myself a reasonable stretch of intact fishing- 

 ground. The railway and the Mackintosh water- 

 proofs have assisted, to an extraordinary extent, to 

 increase the numbers of waders that resort to Tweed- 

 side ; and nothing can be more annoying to the skilled 

 worm-fisher anticipating a great day's take, than to 

 find the range of river determined on by him on the 

 previous night as the scene of the morrow's sport, 

 pre-occupied by a brace of tyros ploughing their way 

 thigh-deep, down, instead of up the streams through, 

 in fact, the very centre of the margins where, at that 



