"These fish," says Mr Scrope, "are found in many salmon rivers, but not in all. It is very abundant in the Tweed, which it visits principally at two seasons; in the spring about the month of May, and again in the month of October, when the males are very plentiful; but the females are scarce till about the beginning or middle of November. With salmon it is the reverse, as their females leave the sea before the males. The bull trout is also more regular in his habits than the salmon; for the fisherman can calculate almost to a day when the large black male trout will leave the sea. The foul fish rise eagerly at the fly, but the clean ones by no means so. They weigh from two to twenty-four pounds, and occasionally, I presume, but very rarely indeed, more. The largest I ever heard of was taken in the Hallowstell fishing water, at the mouth of the Tweed, in April 1840, and weighed twenty-three pounds and a half. The heaviest bull trout I ever encountered myself weighed sixteen pounds, and I had a long and severe contest with his majesty. He was a clean fish, and I hooked him in a cast in Mertoun water called the _Willow Bush_, not in the mouth but in the dorsal fin. Brethren of the craft, guess what sore work I had with him! He went here and there with apparent comfort and ease to his own person, but not to mine. I really did not know what to make of him. There never was such a Hector. I cannot say exactly how long I had him on the hook; it seemed a week at least. At length John Halliburton, who was then my fisherman, waded into the river up to his middle, and cleeked him whilst he was hanging in the stream, and before he was half beat."--P. 66. Many simple-minded people, with something of a sentimental turn, (they are almost always fond of raw oysters, and gloat over a roasted turkey, although they know that it was bled to to death by cutting the roots of its tongue,) look upon angling as a "cruel sport." Let us see, with Mr Scrope, how this matter really stands.