“a fitful sound
    Wafted o’er sullen moss and craggy mound,
    Unfruitful solitudes, that seem’d t’ upbraid
    The sun in heaven!”—­

until, through many an intermediate scene of infinitely varied beauty, the expanded waters—­

“Gliding in silence with unfetter’d sweep,
Beneath an ampler sky, a region wide
Is open’d round them:—­hamlets, towers, and towns,
And blue-topp’d hills, behold them from afar:”—­

we should still have rejoiced to find a twin volume devoted to those wilder and more desolate scenes by which the northern angler is encompassed.  Meanwhile we accept with pleasure our author’s “Days and Nights” upon the Tweed.

Salmon ascend from the sea, and enter this fine river, in greater or less abundance, during every period of the year, becoming more plentiful as the summer advances, provided there is a sufficiency of rain both to enlarge and discolour the waters, and thus enable the fish to pass more securely over those rippling shallows which so frequently occur between the deeper streams.

“The salmon,” says Mr Scrope “travels rapidly, so that those which leave the sea, and go up the Tweed on the Saturday night at twelve o’clock, after which time no nets are worked till the Sabbath is past, are found and taken on the following Monday near St Boswell’s—­a distance, as the river winds, of about forty miles.  This I have frequently ascertained by experience.  When the strength of the current in a spate is considered, and also the sinuous course a salmon must take in order to avoid the strong rapids, their power of swimming must be considered as extraordinary.”—­P. 10.

We do not clearly see, and should have been glad had the author stated, in what manner he ascertained that his St Boswell’s fish had not escaped the sweeping semicircles of the lower nets some days previous.  We admit that there is a great deal of Sabbath desecration committed by salmon, but we also know that they travel upwards, though in smaller number and with greater risk, during all the other days of the week; and we are curious to understand how any angler, however accomplished, can carry his skill in physiognomy to such perfection, as to be able to look a fish in the face on Monday morning, and decide that it had not left the sea till the clock struck twelve on the Saturday night preceding.

“As salmon” our author continues, “are supposed to enter a river merely for the purposes of spawning, and as that process does not take place till September, one cannot well account for their appearing in the Tweed and elsewhere so early as February and March, seeing that they lose in weight and condition during their continuance in fresh water.  Some think it is to get rid of the sea-louse; but this supposition must be set aside, when it is known that this insect adheres only to a portion of the newly-run