WHITLING 127 



f.even was, if possible, even more polluted than it is now, and during 

 hot weather, in most seasons, whole shoals of whitling (besides mature 

 fish) were simply annihilated in their ascent. Now it was observable 

 in such disastrous years that certain feeding banks of the loch might 

 one year be destitute of fish and that during some other year other banks, 

 formerly fully populated, might prove barren. I have little doubt 

 that the explanation of this fluctuation simply was that the shoals of 

 whithng which ought to have peopled these banks were shoals which 

 had perished in the river Leven. 



It may be objected that all this may be very plausible as regards 

 Loch Lomond but need not necessarily represent the habits of the fish 

 elsewhere. But I think on consideration it will be admitted that the 

 " entity of the shoal " — if I may so term it where I have just referred 

 to and presupposed a first great cleavage — is a principle broad enough 

 to be generally applied elsewhere, and that the circumstances of Loch 

 Lomond are peculiar only in this that they give rather special oppor- 

 tunities for observation and deduction. 



I have thought it well to leave as they were originally written the 

 foregoing passages with reference to the " homing " proclivities of 

 whitling, because it is interesting, to me at least, that the conclusions at 

 which I had arrived on the evidence submitted above have since been 

 found to be justified by incontrovertible fact. 



In a Blue Book issued by the Fishery Board for Scotland towards 

 the end of 19 14, the official reference to which is " Fisheries, Scotland, 

 Salmon Fish., 1914, I and II (October, 1914)," there appeared two 

 papers, one of which, by Mr. Ian T. Nelson, the proprietor of the 

 Glenetive deer forest, dealt with " Hatching Results at Glen Etive." 

 I may briefly state that with a view to developing the stock of salmon 

 and sea-trout in the river Etive, Argyllshire, Mr. Nelson constructed 

 an artificial loch in Glen Etive, with increased semi-artificial spawning 

 grounds in connection with it, and erected a small hatchery to 



