of the Fishery Board for Scotlaicd. 



367 



applied to designate both the divisions of the loch, and sometimes it is 

 applied only to the lower loch which communicates with the sea ; while 

 the upper loch, which is entirely fresh, is termed the Loch of Harray. 

 The banks of these lakes, like those of all the Orcadian lakes, are bare 

 and treeless ; and the upper loch is divided from the lower by two long 

 narrow promontories, that jut out from opposite sides, and so nearly meet 

 in the middle as to be connected by a low bridge, called the Bridge of 

 Brogar, over which the roadway passes. 



The area of the Loch of Stenness is 1792 acres, and that of the Loch 

 of Harray 2432 acres; or, together, 4224 acres. A better idea of their 

 great extent will be got when I state that the famous Loch Leven, in 

 Fifeshire, which receives nearly the whole drainage of the county of Kin- 

 ross ; which yields an average of at least 11,000 trout per annum, the 

 mean weight of each trout being nearly a pound ; and brings a rental of 

 .£1000 a year to its fortunate possessor ; has an area of only 3406 acres, or 

 818 acres less than Stenness and Harray. I am quite convinced that, if 

 these lochs were as well protected as Loch Leven, they would soon become 

 as productive. And it should be kept in mind that their season com- 

 mences just about the time when that on Loch Leven ends. 



A deep margin of sea-weed extends for some distance above the Bridge 

 of Waithe into the Loch of Stenness, and on the seaward side of the 

 Bridge there is also a thick growth of sea weeds. Beyond the margin of 

 sea-weeds only inside the Bridge of Waithe, we find a little farther on 

 sea-weeds mixed with fresh-water plants, and in the Loch of Harray 

 fresh-water plants alone. Stenness is decidedly brackish, while the water 

 in Harray is fresh ; the former is nearly 4 miles long, with a maximum 

 breadth of 1J miles; while the latter is 4f miles long, and varying in 

 breadth from 3 furlongs to If miles. There is no transmutation of the 

 marine vegetation anywhere to be seen into fresh water forms. They 

 are as distinct now as they were thousands of years ago, as is eloquently 

 pointed out in the following passage from Hugh Miller's Footsteps of the 

 Creator : — 



Along the green edge of the Lake of Stenness, selvaged by the line of detached 

 weeds with which a recent gale had strewed its shores, I marked that for the 

 first few miles the accumulation consisted of marine alga?, here and there mixed 

 with tufts of stunted reeds or rushes, and that as I receded from the sea, it was 

 the alga? that became stunted and dwarfish, and that the reeds, aquatic grasses, 

 and rushes, grown greatly more bulky in the mass, were also more fully developed 

 individually, till, at length, the marine vegetation altogether disappeared, and 

 the vegetable debris of the shore became purely lacustrine, — I asked myself 

 whether here, if anywhere, a transition flora between loch and sea ought not to 

 be found ? For many thousand years ere the tali grey obelisks of Stenness, 

 whose forms I saw this morning reflected in the water, had been torn from the 

 quarry or laid down in mystic circle on their flat promontories, had this lake 

 admitted the waters of the sea, and been salt in its lower reaches and fresh in its 

 higher. And during this protracted period had its quiet, well-sheltered bottom 

 been exposed to no disturbing influences through which the delicate process of 

 transmutation could have been marred or arrested. Here then, if in any circum- 

 stances, ought we to have had in the broad permanently brackish reaches, at 

 least indications of a vegetation intermediate in its nature between the mono- 

 cotyledons of the lake and the algae of the sea ; and yet not a vestige of such an 

 intermediate vegetation could I find among the up-piled debris of the mixed floras, 

 marine and lacustrine. The lake possesses no such intermediate vegetation. 

 As the water freshens in its middle reaches, the algae become dwarfish and ill- 

 developed ; one species after another ceases to appear, as the habitat becomes 

 wholly unfavourable to it ; until at length we find, instead of the brown, root- 

 less, flowerless fucoids and conferva? of the ocean, the green, rooted, flower-bear- 

 ing flags, rushes, and aquatic grasses of the fresh water. Many thousands of 

 years have failed to originate a single intermediate plant. 

 3 A 



