AMONGST WILD 'FOWL AND SALMON. 69 



spring season they are always getting hooked. Do 

 you know, Hope, that a fine-sized Tay salmon of 

 thirty or forty pounds is worth four or five pounds 

 sterling ; and even a moderate fish brings more 

 money than a sheep, and at that early season it is 

 the perfection of red fish." 



" Is this for the novelty of being the earliest of the 

 season ? " 



" To some extent, possibly ; but the flesh is firmer 

 and finer than later in the year, and a new -run 

 twenty-pound spring fish cannot be bettered; and 

 should not be buttered, Fred might say, as it wants 

 nothing but a little of the water in which it is boiled 

 and a pinch of salt." 



" Our own fish here are approved by the people we 

 send them to, and I find them capital with Chili 

 vinegar." 



" Eespectable esculents ; but there is always some- 

 thing or other that beats < Bannagher,' and one of 

 these is a Tay fish in February or March ; no turbot, 

 mullet, king herring from Loch Fyne, or Dublin Bay 

 haddock can compare; and these are about the pick 

 of fish." 



" I should except mullet, red and grey. I think 

 them indifferent fish ; like tench and pike, they 



