THE TROUT ON THE CAMPSIE FELLS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2105, 28 June 1894, Page 34

THE TROUT ON THE CAMPSIE FELLS.

Looking westward from Stirling Castle, the eye travels over the level alluvium of the Carse, through which the sluggish Forth meanders in countless loops and curves. On the right are piled the Highland hills, creit behind crest, and on the left runs a lower, but continuous ridge, part of the Lennox range known as the Gargunnook and Campsie Fells. Much of the northern side of this elevation is precipitous, falling sheer, or almost sheer, several hundreds of feet towards the valley of the Forth.

The mcorland on the summit forms the watershed between the systems of the Forth and the Carron, whence the streams following northward flow in lofty cascades over the precip;ces of the fells.

There are trout both above and below these falls, those of the plain excelling in colour and shape their dingy kinsmen of the moor, but undoubtedly descendants of a common ancestry. But how did these moorland trout first get access to their present haunts ? They may have passed down the falls alive in times of flood, but no fish that ever was hatched from roe could ascend them.

Must one predicate a time ap^erior to the geological rift that reared this hill-crest, when these streams ran on a uniform incline from source to sea, and trout might traverse places which have for immense tracts of time been

wholly impassable P If so, then how greatly increased must be our reverence for the grimy little troutlings which dart away as we step across their narrow homes, for even so must their distant progenitors have scuttled away when the earth quaked beneath the tread of the woolly elephant, or the jungle rustled at the passage of the Macharodon — the formidable sabre-toothed tiger.

These humble representatives of the Salmonidcn are merely links in the chain of animated nature ; if our speculation is well founded, their ancestors, identical in form and habits with themselves, must have been denizens of the Tertiary landscape. — Blackwood's Magazine.