THE DEE H7 



for by transmitted instinct — prior to 1875 or a little later — every 

 salmon that tried to rest in any pool below Banchory was either 

 netted, or so hurried, flurried, and frightened, that by degrees trans- 

 mitted instinct taught the fish to rush the lower pools of the river 

 at their best pace until they swam into waters where they were 

 not molested. When netting ceased in the lower waters, it looks 

 as if this transmitted instinct took some twenty years to wear out, 

 and that then the spring fish finding these lower pools quiet and 

 suitable took to occupying them again as they had done for years 

 previous to the introduction of netting. A further case of trans- 

 mitted instinct is shown, I think, by the way in which the natural 

 minnow has ceased to kill. This lure was first introduced some 

 time in the eighties, and for many years it proved irresistible, but 

 in 1906 it was nearly impossible to kill a fish on it. Had not 

 transmitted instinct taught the fish it was dangerous ? Anyway 

 they changed their tastes completely, and seized big gudgeons and 

 spinning sand eels ; and doubtlessly the time will come when they 

 will tire of them and their falseness, even as they have tired of the 

 " Yorkshire Grey," as the late Mr. Digby Cayley, who was its 

 introducer to the Dee, used to call the minnow. 



In the autumn of 1912, Mr. F. Green Wilkinson, fishing the 

 Kingcausie water, caught a fish of 47 lb. — the heaviest landed in 

 the United Kingdom this year. 



