88 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SALMON FISHING 



misplaced the fish is not. There is an immense 

 trout in Loch Awe in Scotland, which is so voracious, 

 and swallows his own species with such avidity, that 

 he has obtained the name of Salmo ferox. I pull 

 about this unnatural monster till he is tired, land 

 him, and give him the coup de grace. Is this cruel ? 

 Cruelty " should be made of sterner stuff." There 

 is a certain spurious sort of humanity going about 

 that I cannot understand. Thus I know a lady who 

 will not eat game, because, she says, shooting is a 

 cruel amusement ; but she is very much addicted 

 to fowls, and all domestic poultry, feeding them one 

 day, and eating them up the next, with treacherous 

 alacrity and amiable perseverance. It would be 

 more candid in her, therefore, to say to us sportsmen, 

 like the fox in the fable 



" Go, but be moderate in your food ; 

 A pheasant too might do me good." 



" I once saw," says the learned and accomplished 

 Dr. Gillespie, " one of these all-devouring fish in a 

 curious predicament. In fishing, or rather strolling, 

 within these few years, with a rod in one hand and 

 a book in the other, so as to alternate reading and 

 fishing, as the clouds came and went, I observed 

 a great many June-flies, at which the fish were 

 occasionally rising, and which at the same time 

 were picked up by the swallows, as they skimmed 

 over the surface of the still water. It so happened 

 that a trout from beneath, and a swallow from 

 above, had fixed their affections upon the same 

 yellow-winged and tempting fly. Down came the 



