38 SALMONID.E. 



pounds in weight ; and in some of the. smaller bays the 

 shoal could be traced several times circling it, and appa- 

 rently feeding. In these bays they are occasionally taken 

 with a common hang-net stretched across ; and when angled 

 for in the estuaries, with the ordinary flies which are used 

 in the rivers of the South for Grilse, rose and took so 

 eagerly, that thirty-four were the produce of one rod, en- 

 gaged for about an hour and a half. They enter every 

 river and rivulet in immense numbers, and when fishing 

 for the Salmon are annoying from their quantity. The 

 food of those taken with the rod in the estuaries appeared 

 very indiscriminate ; occasionally the remains of some small 

 fish, which were too much digested to be distinguished ; 

 sometimes flies, beetles, or other insects, which the wind 

 or tide had carried out ; but the most general food seemed 

 to be the Talitris locusta, or common sand-hopper, with 

 which some of their stomachs were completely crammed. 

 It is scarcely possible to arrive with any certainty at the 

 numbers of this fish. Two hundred are frequently taken 

 at a single draught of a sweep-net, and three hundred 

 have occasionally been counted.*" They are much more 

 numerous in the Don, the Spey, and the Tay, than in the 

 Tweed. 



Great quantities of this Salmon-Trout are sent to the 

 London market ; those from Perth, Dundee, Montrose, 

 and Aberdeen appear, from their comparative depth of 

 body, to be better fed, are higher in colour, and considered 

 to be finer in flavour than from some other localities. 

 The Fordwich Trout of Isaac Walton is the Salmon-Trout ; 

 and its character for affording " rare good meat," besides 

 the circumstance of its being really an excellent fish, second 

 only to the Salmon, was greatly enhanced, no doubt, by 

 the opportunity of eating it very fresh. Fordwich is about 



