place provide himself with an inexhaustible fund of hope and patience, and then proceed to troll with two rods, one bearing a phantom, the other a natural minnow or small trout. With luck and perseverance he may during the term of a tolerably long life succeed in catching a 20-lb. ferox, when of course he will be happy ever after. Life will have nothing left worth pursuing. Therefore it is fortunate that a large ferox is seldom caught.

"Trolling for giant trout is the very acme of rod-fishing," says the author of "The Moor and the Loch," and then proceeds to give rules, which are so remarkably pertinent, and so little bear extraction from the context, that we content ourselves with directing the ferox fisher by all means to make himself master of Mr. Colquhoun's whole chapter on this exciting sport. When the angler is suitably equipped and gently rowed on one of the larger Highland lochs, as he reclines in the stern of the boat and watches scene after scene of changeful loveliness open upon his view, each illuminated by a brilliant sun or rendered more sombre as the light fades off it, a brother fisherman in less happy case may be excused the only feeling of envy for such a happy wight that should ever trouble his serene nature. How can cares or mundane ambitions consist with such perfect freedom of action, while new emotions of admiration and thankfulness rise within a man each moment? Unlike Virgil's husbandmen, such a fortunate angler knows and values his own happiness. His only marvel is that all men are not ferox fishers. After a day thus spent, including a chat with the shepherd at the shieling by the head of the loch, and a distribution of pence to his bare-legged children, the angler seeks his couch certain of balmy slumbers, at peace with himself and the world. If he has not yet caught the big ferox of which he is in quest, he may easily do so in his dreams. Even there the longing will obtrude itself; the amari aliquid, inseparable from this world's joys, will start up. Fortunately, the angler in Scotland is never troubled with indigestion, more especially if he has taken a nightcap of the liquor of the country before bedtime. Else, instead of catching the large ferox in the bed of the loch, a monster ferox would certainly haunt his dreams and take him in his feather bed, so engrossing is the pursuit of this fish apt to become.

Salt blows the breeze, and the waves run high between the mistclad mountains where lies our next quest, the pursuit of the sea-trout. It may be taken close at home in beautiful Loch Lomond when summer fairly sets in, or farther afield in Loch Maree during autumn, best of all perhaps in the salt-water lochs and fiords of the northVol. ii. p. 320, seq. (ed. 4, 1878).

wave.

western Highlands and Sutherlandshire. Who does not know the sensational story of the number captured one afternoon by Mr. Stoddart from the ruins of the old castle on Loch Assynt? We have stood there and thought of his exploit, but, alas! never emulated it. For dashing sport and constant excitement there is no kind of northern loch-fishing so entrancing as is sea-trout angling with artificial fly. "Hah! he had it then," we murmur, as the shapely silvery creature leaps wildly at our gaudy lure, and the unkind barb is driven well home into its palate; and while the boat rocks on the dashing waves, and Donald vainly endeavours to get her head to the wind, whirr ! whirr away goes the swift sea-trout towards the open sea. You hold on, and set your teeth in the face of the wind, while up into the air leaps the fish once and again, and then runs off at a tangent and springs up once more, to fall like a bar of silver on the crest of a big Your heart is in your mouth for a moment; but all is right, and the line is soon seen cutting the dark water to one side of the boat. "Now, Donald, the net!" Whirr! away once more darts the trout, once more springs up thirty yards away from the boat into the sunshine, shows its gallant form for a moment; then there comes a slack line, and you know your fate. " Aweel, sir," says Donald, "snuffing" the while, "I jist thocht that was ower muckle a troot to be ta'en. She's like enough the witch troot that Sandy Macfarlane saw leaping like a flying-fish i' the moonlight roond and roond his boat. Sandy had been, ye ken, to Craigellachy to meet the Men, and hadna but twa drams, when," &c., &c. This story is as good as any other, at all events, to solace you for the disappointment ; so you suffer the old man to tell the tale of the "witch troot," and then he too has a dram like his hero Sandy, after which it will not be his fault if you are unsuccessful. Nothing is so snobbish and detestable as to spoil a boatman by overpaying and giving him too much whisky: but a true sportsman and gentleman is always considerate to his gilly; and when the boatman is old, and a specimen of nature's gentlemen like our gillie Donald, a little extra kindness, and indulging him in a "crack" with you now and then between the "drifts," gives him as much pleasure as it will give you profit. Such a man looks forward to summer, when "the gentlemen will be coming," quite as much as the latter long for their northern holiday.

We have not spoken of taking the lordly salmon, as it frequently may be taken in these larger lochs; but not even its capture, not the leaps of a freshly run sea-trout, not the angry, sullen resistance of a big ferox, shall seduce us from our allegiance to the little brown or yellow trout, as he is called in Scotland. This lithe and beautiful

fish, after all, is the fly-fisherman's first and last love. He can never forget the red spotted fish, the largest he as yet had ever caught, which amazed him by its vigour one evening when, as a little boy, he was angling for minnows, and by chance caught a trout which had been under the bank. Has not Christopher North painted the scene in words which we will not emulate? And in token that trout-fishing lasts as a perennial delight through the votary's life, nothing more need be said than to recall the affecting end of that great fisherman and good man who on his death-bed, so his daughter tells, asked for his fly-book, took out and smoothed his treasures, and laid them gently by his side. There are many lochs, each possessing its own store of recollections, which rise before the mind's eye in treating of trout-fishing proper. Loch Leven has its own circle of admirers; and doubtless a loch which will almost always yield a fair basket of trout, each on an average weighing a pound, is not a place to be despised. But most people will dislike the commercial flavour which surrounds the whole affair, the paying heavily for permission to use a boat, the allotment of stations, club contests, prizes for greatest weight of trout, and the like. This at once transports us to Dogdyke in Lincolnshire, and the fishing. tournaments of the great unwashed in their thousands from Sheffield for perch, eels, and the baser fish. These trials of skill doubtless. suit their own admirers, but the man who loves fine scenery, and fishing as the humour takes him for a nobler quarry, cannot away with them. Let him behold the dim grey mountains of Sutherlandshire veiled in almost perpetual mist, the snow-fields on Ben More, whence the breeze blows cool and fresh on the heated forehead of civilisation's victim, the wide rippling surface of Loch Awe, in Assynt, spread before him, where the yellow water-lilies ride in front of an almost tropical growth of papyrus-like reeds. Or let him breast the mountain at the back of the little inn at Inchnadamph, and struggle waist-deep through heather until, by great good fortune, where one stony step is just like another, he arrives at Loch Mulach Corrie, the wondrous abode of the so-called gillaroo trout. Or, once more, let him quit the snug fishing abode at Overscaig and take the road by Loch Griam above Loch Shin into the Duke of Westminster's deer-forest, where an hour's steady walking will bring him to what we regard as the gem of Highland lochs for trout-fishing, lovely Loch Merkland. In any of these sheets of water he will not only speedily fill his basket on a "saft" day, but he will enjoy such a feast of beauty and see so many rare beasts, birds, and flowers, if he possesses a naturalist's eye, that he will not forget the spot in a lifetime.

Hicks's "Wanderings in Assynt" is still a useful book for the flies. of that district. But a few red and yellow flies with mallard and teal wings are all that is necessary to provide him with ample sport in these large and little-fished lochs. A very windy day should be avoided. There are no natural flies on the waters in such weather, consequently the fish have no inducements to feed near the surface ; and, as far as we have observed, trout do not like broken or agitated water. The angler should first row up wind to the head of the loch, say, trolling with two stiff rods, one armed with a phantom, the other with a natural minnow. Thus he has a good chance of either a sea-trout, a salmon, or a ferox. Then let him wind up, take a 14-foot fly-rod, and drift gently down by the edge of the loch, about twenty yards away from it, more or less on the edge of the deep water, so as to be able to throw his flies near the reed beds, floating weeds, fringes of lilies, &c., where the best fish feed. A good boatman is essential in these manœuvres, his duty being to keep the boat exactly the right distance away from the favourite fishing and feeding grounds, and on no account to suffer it to advance too quickly. He must back-water strongly at times, at other times be prepared to make a stroke to left or right as wanted. As for the angler, his work is to throw deftly as often as he can, not dwelling too long upon one place, and suffering the "bob" fly to show itself as much as possible. Mr. Francis, who is an excellent practical angler, lately set forth, by a simple diagram in the Field paper, the best mode of covering all the water contiguous to a boat, so that no part of it should be unfished in such a "drift" as we have described. A moment's reflection on these curves will show the rationale of "drifting" down a loch and fishing at the same time better than any verbal description.1

These hints and reminiscences of loch-fishing might well end here, but the literary like the practical angler never knows when to stop. "Mickle wad aye hae mair" is a piscatorial proverb, frequently exemplified in the arm-chair as well as in the stern of a loch boat. We will so far gratify the eager reader as to bestow another paragraph on a book which has just been published, and which is specially designed for the angler as he has been here drawn.2 The author describes it truly as 66 a very practical treatise;" equipment, tackle, casting and striking, even the etiquette of loch-fishing, are here amply and lucidly expounded. Most men, indeed, require no manual of etiquette for fishing, but are guided by

1 See the Field, May 20, 1882.

2 Scotch Loch Fishing. By Black Palmer. (Blackwood, 1882.)

the good old rules of the craft, to be as considerate and helpful to others as possible; the Glasgow Fishing Club, however, has elaborated a series of rules for fishing martinets, three of which are printed in this book. We do not see anything in them which ordinary gentlemanly feeling would not dictate, and look with some diffidence, it must be confessed, on all that seems likely to lead up to the "Manual of Fishing Etiquette" of the future. The very word "etiquette" strikes a false note in the Highlands, close as the connection always was between France and Scotland. On one point we are in entire agreement with "Black Palmer;" and his advice is so sensible that, maugre the tacklemaker's ire, we will quote his words in full. "Don't buy a large stock of flies. If going for a day's fishing, buy as many as you think you'll need, and no more. Buy them of different sizes; and if you get a few each time you go for an outing, you will be astonished how soon a spare stock accumulates." There is much sound sense in this. A quantity of spare flies means certain tangles and certain deterioration. Size, too, "Black Palmer" deems of more importance than kinds. The flies he does recommend are hare lug, red and teal, orange and mallard, green and woodcock, Zulus, red palmers, March browns (have these wrapped, we would add, with gold tinsel), yellow body with cinnamon wings, and hare lug body with mallard wing and red tip. These should be dressed, some Loch Leven size, some on a hook two sizes larger. Too large flies are a great mistake; fish will at times take them, it is true, but they terrify more fish than they kill. Some things sound ludicrous among the articles of an angler's equipment which he prescribes, as, for instance, a screw-driver and gimlet. These resemble the burglar's stock in trade rather than the peaceful angler's, especially when followed by "a carriage lamp and candles to fit ;" but it is explained that these last are for travelling. The gimlet is afterwards recommended to be employed as a peg in the thwarts of a boat for leaning a rod against. A neat and enthusiastic trolling friend employs a little brass rest, made in the following shape ĭ, for this purpose, and uses a gimlet to fix it into the boat's gunwale. Nothing could be more useful, and it slips in and out without any trouble. For loch-fishing always use a basket; for river-fishing a wallet. This is a wrinkle of our own experience which will commend itself to all true fishermen. "Black Palmer " is most happy in his practical suggestions, and luckily these are what an angler most needs: his reminiscences of Lochs Assynt, Ard, Morar, and Awe are somewhat thin and feeble. A commendable feature in his little book is that it is interleaved for notes. That it VOL. CCLIV. NO. 1825.

D