THE COOKERY OF THE TROUT 249 



are in perfection in the rapid rivers flowing through 

 gravelly pastoral uplands or springing in clean- 

 stemmed pine forests. Such are the Tweed and 

 its tributaries, the Spey, or the Aberdeenshire Dee. 

 The rushes and broken waterfalls find them constant 

 exercise, while in backwaters and in the quiet swirls 

 behind rocks and stones, there are resting-places 

 where they can digest and fatten in tranquillity. From 

 the nature of the country, there are fine shades of 

 difference, but all easily distinguishable by the 

 expert. There is no exception to be taken to a 

 trout from Tay, hooked anywhere between Scone 

 and Taymouth. Yet he is distinctly inferior in 

 flavour though possibly fuller in flesh to his 

 cousins that have been caught in Tweed or Teviot, 

 because the Tay, after its filtering in the loch of the 

 name, drains the rich arable farms of the Carse of 

 Gowrie. For that, as we have remarked, there is an 

 evident reason. But in other cases, the difference is 

 as clear, and yet there is no satisfactory explanation. 

 Why should the heavy brown trout in the lakes of 

 West Sutherland be unmistakably better than those 

 in the lakes to the east, while those bred in Loch 

 Shin are inferior to all the others ? Why should the 

 trout in three adjacent lochs in Arisaig, all stocked 

 some five and thirty years ago from Loch Aiorar, 



