132 SALMON AND TROUT. 
Garry, the course of which from Faskally upwards through the 
pass of Killicrankie is ‘mildly rapid and its bed strewn over 
with rocks and boulders of every dimension. . . . One not fully 
versed in all the outs and ins of salmon fishing, proficient 
as he might be in the use of the rod, becomes so deceived as 
to construe the interspersed breaks and shallows, the flush of 
water passing through the tired eddies, the jutting shelves 
which gleam underneath—the whole build, in fact, of the 
channel—into a series of admirable resting places for the 
fish. . . . But the truth simply is that in resting humour no 
fish are ever there. Such are not the spots where the instinct 
of salmon induces them to halt at and show appetite. Proceed 
farther up. Climb from its torrent termination to the head of 
the pass, to the point in the course of the Garry where the 
distribution of the rock becomes alternated also with stretches 
of alluvial deposit—in fact, with spawning ground—and in the 
pools favoured by such a combination you will find that not 
only are salmon to be met with, but that they are to be met 
with in a position which prompts and enables them to come 
readily towards the offered lure of the angler.’ 
‘As observed, however, the caprices of salmon with regard 
to the particular parts they favour or reject, and even as to the 
position occupied by each individual fish, where there are 
several in the same pool, are most curious. Possibly the latter 
arrangement may be dependent upon some ‘first come, first 
served’ principle—a sort of piscine recognition of the rule of 
beati possessores. Where salmon are very numerous indeed, 
as for example in the Galway River, I have seen whole shoals 
which for some reason appear intent on ‘keeping themselves 
to themselves,’ and from whose ranks straggling was evidently 
interdicted. These different shoals were almost always of dif- 
ferent sizes. An interesting example of this was noticed by my 
friend, Sir Charles Mordaunt, in the case of a pool in a well- 
known Scotch river. In a letter to me he says: ‘Once, when 
the water was too low for fishing, a friend and I had the oppor- 
tunity of very closely observing the salmon as they lay in “‘ranks” 
