we sprung out beneath the glare of lamps upon the glistening pavement, quite delighted by the novelty of our previous situation, and holding up our arm to aid the descent of our unlettered friend,-Reader, -it was Sir Walter Scott! We here present a few fishing lines spun by that ingenious angler, Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart. They relate to a branch of the subject on which we dare not enter, except "in numerous verse," as no man could withstand the accusation of being both a proser and a poacher. THE LEISTER SONG. Flashes the blood-red gleam Over the midnight slaughter, Wild shadows haunt the stream, Dark forms glance o'er the water. A Salmon, ho! oho! In scales of light, the creature bright, Murmurs the low cascade, The tall trees stand so saintly, Under their quiet shade The river whispers faintly. It is the Leisterer's cry! Glances the shining spear, From harmless hands unheeded; On, in its swift career, The dream-like fish hath speeded. It is the Leisterer's cry! The Salmon, ho! oho! Along its wake the torches break, And waver to and fro. Wildly the eager band It is the Leisterer's cry! The Salmon, ho! oho! And lightening like, the white prongs strike Rises the cheering shout, Over the rapid slaughter; The gleaming torches flout The old oak shadow'd water. It is the Leisterer's cry! The Salmon, ho! oho! Calmly it lies, and gasps, and dies THE BULL-TROUT.* This is another great migratory species, well known in many of our larger rivers, but not so easy to identify with any of the continental kinds. It is thicker in proportion to its length than the salmon, the fins are more muscular, especially the tail, and the latter organ is square, or even slightly convex, or rounded terminally, instead of being forked or semi-lunar, as in so many fishes. The terminal portions of the pectoral fins are also rather of a dusky hue, than of that more decided blackish tint, which characterises those parts in true salmon. The head is proportionally larger than that of the salmon; the teeth are longer and stronger, and the inferior posterior angle of the opercular cover more elongated backwards. The general colour is a greenish grey above, the lower parts silvery white; the * Salmo eriox, Linn. Yar. body above the lateral line being thickly covered with large cruciform black spots. The flesh of this species is of a yellowish tint, and has a coarse flavour, except in the young state. It is consequently less esteemed, as a marketable commodity, than any other of the sea-going kinds. In the breeding season it assumes a much blacker tint than the salmon, and wants much of the red markings. All the under parts, jaws, and cheeks, become blotched with deep blackish gray. The hook of the under jaw of the male does not assume so elongated a form as that of the salmon. The old fish begin to enter the rivers about the end of July, and are believed to deposit their spawn and return to the sea about a month earlier than the last named species. This is a very powerful fish in all its states, and feeds voraciously without much discrimination. Sir William Jardine informs us, that when hooked it springs repeatedly out of the water, and runs—to use an angler's phrase—with extraordinary vigour to free itself from barb and line. The river Tweed and its tributaries are among the principal localities of the bull-trout, although it occurs occasionally in the Solway, and in the rivers of the west and north of Scotland. It weighs in the adult state from 15 to 25 pounds. The last we saw was killed by netting near Peebles, and weighed upwards of 17 pounds. Such British authors as have applied the continental name of Salmo hucho to any native species, have no doubt intended by so doing to designate (however erroneously) the fish in question. The Bull-trout, in the adult state, is characte ristically called the Round-tail in the river Annan, and-in common, however, with those of other species-its young are there and elsewhere named Sea-trout. The Warkworth and Coquet trout of Durham and Northumberland are the young of this species, as are likewise the Whitlings of the Tweed, or Berwick Trout of the London markets. But the whitlings of all our Scotch rivers are not necessarily the young of the Bull-trout, in as far as provincial names are sometimes differently applied. We have no doubt, however, that the Norway salmon of our Sutherlandshire, and other northern fisheries, is identical with the Bull-trout, that is, with Salmo eriox, in the adult state, although some regard that fish as a variety of the common Salmo salar. According to Dr. Parnell, the young of the Bull-trout, when about nine inches in length, has the tail still acutely forked; but he observes, that when the fish attains the length of twenty inches, the middle ray of the tail is more than half the extent of the longest ray of that organ, whereas the same ray in the salmon is never half as long as the most lengthened caudal ray at any age whatever. This ingenious author has carefully described the numerous varieties of the Bull-trout in his excellent paper "On the Fishes of the Firth of Forth."* The mode of angling for this great migratory trout is the same as that pursued for salmon. In truth it is seldom killed in the adult state except by accident, while the angler is casting for that * Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society, vol. vii. more prized species. We shall briefly notice its young (as part and parcel of those gregarious and nomadian tribes called Sea-trout) in the course of the following article. THE SALMON-TROUT. In a commercial and culinary point of view this is the most important species we possess, next to the salmon. It bears a closer resemblance to that fish than to the bull-trout in its general form and aspect, but its teeth are more numerous, both on the jaws, tongue, and vomer. The tail is not so much forked at the same age as that of the salmon, but it becomes square, as in that species, in the course of adolescence. According to Mr. Yarrell, the size and surface of the tail are also less than those of the salmon, owing to the comparative shortness of the caudal rays. Many authors and anglers are of opinion that there are two kinds of salmon-trout (Salmo trutta and albus of Naturalists), and to these, in their various states, the names of sea-trout, white-trout, herling, whitling, phinock, &c. have been applied. The characters of each, however, are extremely difficult to determine and define; and we agree with Sir William Jardine and Mr. Yarrell, that both will be found to merge eventually into one,entitled to the name of Salmo trutta. These fish are very abundant in broad Scotland (one of the narrowest countries ever known), and are taken in * Salmo trutta, Linn.-Salmo albus, Flem.? |