To Mountain Tarn 



many of them. The autumn rush is great. Infec- 

 tion spreads. The affluents are few, most of 

 them insignificant. When deep enough to admit 

 the migrants, they are overcrowded. 



As a salmon stream the Tay is facile princeps. 

 It is generous of proportion, swelling into an 

 estuary, denied to the Tweed. For many a mile 

 from its mouth it is sea flushed. Lake-fed, its 

 extremes of rise and fall are narrowed. The 

 overflow is gathered, the floods tempered, the 

 droughts tided over. Tributaries are ample, as 

 the mighty limbs of a tree. Crowding is unknown. 

 For running fish, the way up ; for spent fish, the 

 way down are open. Nor does disease spread as 

 in the attenuated waters of the south. 



With bank calling across to bank, and countless 

 fords where the pool shallows and the current 

 runs, Tweed appeals to me as a trouting stream. 

 The smaller forms are in keeping with its 

 character, in sympathy with its atmosphere of 

 poetry and song. Trout are idyllic. The true 

 migrant is the sea trout. Salmon is out of pro- 

 portion and sensational, and save in some of the 

 lower reaches below Dryburgh and Kelso, might 

 almost be spared. The Tay is a salmon stream, 

 with trout. Salmon are in the greater sympathy. 

 Trout are out of proportion, overshadowed, 

 thrown in. It is perhaps a question whether 

 perfect salmon and trout fishing are found in the 

 same stream. 



119 



