Those who are accustomed to salmon which has been carried in ice a long distance, and kept for some days before being eaten, do not always appreciate the newly-killed fish as it is given in Scotland, with its firm, flaky consistence and fresh curd. A Londoner, who had taken a house for the summer in Forfarshire, had made the acquaintance of the lessee of one of the salmon fisheries on the coast of that county, and asked him one day to be so good as allow him to have a fish for a dinner party which he was about to give. A fine fresh salmon was accordingly sent to the house. A few weeks afterwards the Englishman came down to the coast again, and after expressing his thanks for the fish, ventured to remark that somehow it was harder and more flaky than what he was accustomed to in London. He was about to give another dinner, he said, and would like another salmon. The lessee, promising that he should have one quite to his taste, went down to one of his men and gave the following order: ‘Sandy, you’ll take that fish and hang it up in the sun all day. Then after breakfast to-morrow you’ll lay it on a stone and thump it hard all over with a heavy stick, then hang it up in the sun again till the afternoon, and after that send it up to Mr. ----.’ The Londoner in a few days appeared to express his thanks for the fish which he pronounced to be exactly what he liked, and what he was used to in the south. [Sidenote: TROUT AND FISHING-RODS] Trouting streams in this country and in Western America have distinct peculiarities. Some years ago I was rambling up Glen Spean, and along the heathery and rocky banks of the River Treig with an American friend, who had spent much of his life in surveying the Western Territories of the United States. ‘What a fine stream,’ he remarked, ‘not to have trout in it!’ I assured him there were plenty of trout in all the streams of the district. ‘But how can that be?’ he enquired, ‘there are no poles growing along the banks.’ He explained that in the Far West, Providence appeared to have so arranged that fish need not be sought for in streams on the margins of which no wood grew, such as would supply a fishing-rod. [Sidenote: A BEAR’S DEN] The mention of sport in the Highlands brings to recollection another illustration of the curious vitality of some stories, and the singular transformations which they may undergo as they are passed on from mouth to mouth through successive generations. An old legend in the north-west Highlands tells how two men set out to kill a wolf that was destroying the sheep of the crofters of Kintail. One of them entered the animal’s den, while the other stood on guard at the entrance. Soon afterwards the wolf returned and made for its cave, when the man at the entrance seized it by the tail as it got inside, and held it fast. His companion within then called out One-eyed Gilchrist Who closed the hole? The other answered