LOCH-FISHING 129 



extremely doubtful. If the situation has nothing else 

 to recommend it, he need not be surprised should it 

 contribute little to the filling of his creel. The average 

 Highland burn rushes impetuously over a bare and 

 rocky bed. and the fare with which it furnishes the trout 

 contained in it is of the scantiest. It yields them but 

 a meagre living, and, as iheir larder is never too bounti- 

 fully plenished, they do not willingly permit a fragment 

 of its contents to pass to the loch below. They rarely 

 know satiety, and only on occasions of unusual spate is 

 their industry unequal to the interception of all the food 

 the stream bears with it. Not until the autumn, when 

 on their way to the redds, do the trout congregate 

 about the burn-mouth. The sandy shallows may not, 

 except during the evening rise, justify the reputation 

 they have earned, but the fish the angler does take 

 there will be found more pleasing to his eye than those 

 he captures elsewhere. The trout taken over a dark 

 bottom are generally black, if not comely, while those 

 which haunt the yellow sands are bright in colour, and, 

 in their beauty, much prized objects of pursuit. 



One reads occasionally that certain animals possess 

 the power to change their colour with the object of 

 bringing it into harmony with that of their surround- 

 ings. The gift has been conferred on them by a 



