running amongst the rocks; and I have only one small sea trout.

HAL.-Your fortune will come another day. Why, you have not a single crimped fish for dinner, and it is now nearly two o'clock; and you have been catching for the picklers, for those fish may all go to the boiling house. I must again be your purveyor. Can you point out to me any part of this pool where you have not fished?

ALL.-No.

HAL.-Then I have little chance.

PHYS. O yes! you have a charm for catching fish.

HAL.-Let me know what flies you have tried, and I may perhaps tell you if I have a chance. With my small bright humming bird, as you call it, I will make an essay.

POIET.-But this fishery is really very limited; and two pools for four persons a small allowance.

HAL.-If you could have seen this river twenty years ago, when the cruives were a mile higher up, then you might have enjoyed fishing. There were eight or ten pools, of

SALMON RIVERS.-TAY AND TWEED. 117

the finest character possible for angling, where a fisherman of my acquaintance has hooked thirty fish in a morning. The river was then perfect, and it might easily be brought again into the same state; but even as it is now, with this single good pool and this second tolerable one, I know no place where I could, in the summer months, be so secure of sport as here-certainly no where in Great Britain.

POIET.-I have often heard the Tay and the Tweed vaunted as salmon rivers.

HAL.-They were good salmon rivers, and are still very good, as far as the profit of the proprietor is concerned; but, for angling, they are very much deteriorated. The net fishing, which is constantly going on except on Sundays and in close time, suffers very few fish to escape; and a Sunday's flood offers the sole chance of a good day's sport, and this only in particular parts of these rivers. I remember the Tweed and the Tay in a far better state. The Tweed, in the late Lord Somerville's time, always contained taking-fish after every flood in the

summer and, between Abbotsford and Melrose, I have known six or seven fish taken by a single rod in the morning. In the Tay, only ten years ago, at Mickleure, I was myself one of two anglers who took eight fine fish,--three of them large salmon, -in a short morning's fishing; but now, except in spring fishing, when the fish are little worth taking, there is no certainty of sport in these rivers; and one, two, or three fish (which last is of rare occurrence), are all even an experienced angler can hope to take in a day's skilful and constant angling.

POIET. You have fished in most of the salmon rivers of the north of Europe,-give us some idea of the kind of sport.

HAL.-I have fished in some, but perhaps not in the best; for this it is necessary to go into barbarous countries-Lapland, or the extreme north of Norway; and I have generally loved too much the comforts of life to make any greater sacrifices than such as are made in this expedition. I have heard the river at Drontheim boasted of as an excellent salmon river,—and I know two worthy

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anglers who have tried it; but I do not think they took more fish in a day than I have sometimes taken in Scotland and Ireland. All the Norwegian rivers, that I tried, (and they were all in the south of Norway,) contained salmon. I fished in the Glommen, one of the largest rivers in Europe; in the Mandals, which appeared to me the best fitted for taking salmon; the Avendal and the Torrisdale;-but, though I saw salmon rise in all these rivers, I never took any fish larger than a sea trout; of these I always took many-and even in the fiords, or small inland salt-water bays; but I think never any one more than a pound. It is true, I was in Norway in the beginning of July, and in exceedingly bright weather, and when there was no night; for even at twelve o'clock the sky was so bright, that I read the smallest print in the columns of a newspaper. I was in Sweden later-in August: I fished in the magnificent Gotha, below that grand fall Trolhetta, which to see is worth a voyage from England; but I never raised there any fish worth taking: yet a

gentleman from Gothenburg told me he had formerly taken large trout there. I took, in this noble stream, a little trout about as long as my hand; and the only fish I got to eat at Trolhetta was bream. The Falkenstein, a darker water, very like a second-rate Scotch river-say the Don-abounds in salmon; and there I had a very good day's fishing. I took six fish, which gave me great sport; they were grilses, under 6lbs.; but I lost a salmon, which I think was above 10lbs. This river I conceive must be, generally, excellent; it is not covered with saw-mills, like the Norwegian rivers in general; its colour is good, and it is not so clear as most of the rivers of the south of Norway.

PHYS. Do you think the saw-mills hurt the fishing?

HAL. I do not doubt it. The immense quantity of sawdust which floats in the water, and which forms almost hills along the banks, must be poisonous to the fish, by sometimes choaking their gills and interfering with their respiration. I have never fished for salmon in Germany. The Elbe and the