THE BOON 377 



easily seen. One of these, if I remember correctly, is fully 20 feet 

 long. Loch Boon is a capital trouting loch, but does not yield 

 many salmon, since early running fish do not readily enter the loch 

 owing to the rough ascent necessary. 



About a hundred years ago the outflow of the river from the loch 

 was sluiced, and a great barrier of rock tunnelled by Earl Cassillis 

 and Mr. Macadam of Craigengillan. The level of the loch was 

 thereby lowered, and an attempt made to regulate the flow of water 

 to the river. Two sluices were constructed, each 6 feet wide and 

 6 feet 8 inches high, and each sluice communicated with a rock 

 tunnel 66 feet long. One sluice was kept open all the year round ; 

 the other, which was at a different level, was seldom opened. I 

 believe this to be the earliest operation of the kind in Scot- 

 laud, and not anywhere repeated till the " sixties," when Mr. 

 Hutchinson, the tenant of Soval in the Lewis, began operations of a 

 similar kind, if on a much smaller scale, by damming up his " Loch 

 Dismal," 1 after the manner he had seen practised on the Costello, in 

 Ireland. 



At Loch Doon outlet, as originally formed, the rush of waters 

 through the tunnels was found to be too great, and, during floods, 

 the sluices could not be reached. In 1885 extensive alterations 

 were made, and now, instead of a tunnel 66 feet long, the principal 

 salmon pass is 155 feet long. The upper end of this pass is level 

 for a distance of 17 feet, and is in tunnel, since it passes below the 

 road. The remainder is an open rock cutting, with a gradient of 

 practically 1 in 20. It might with advantage be improved at the 

 bottom, but the essentials of an excellent pass are here. If the 

 object, however, has been to get salmon into Loch Doon early, the 

 real difficulty is not in the pass, but in the river Doon lower down. 



Ness Glen, through which the Doon first rushes, has a steepish 

 gradient and much broken cascaded water, quite sufficient, when the 

 water temperature is low, to prevent spring fish ascending. It is a 

 beautiful defile, but a rather forbidding stair for spring salmon. 

 When the water temperature has lost its wintry character, fish will 

 ascend without hesitation. Fish tend, as a matter of fact, to 

 congregate in the lower and larger pools of Ness Glen. Unfor- 

 tunately they are here netted in the spring, I understand. This is 

 against all the best interests of the river, and, so far as value goes, 

 spring angling would, no doubt, be found to be much more 

 remunerative. 



1 Vide p. 299. 



