Part IV., chap. xiii., I have mentioned the large trout killed in the

bay of Corree, or Ob a Choir 'I, in the summer of 1878, when I was fishing along with a friend. This splendid fish weighed 21 lbs. when we got it to the nearest railway station, then at Dingwall. It was certainly not a sea-fish, _i.e._ not a bull-trout, salmon, or sea-trout, and it had not the large head and wild look of the fish usually called ferox; in my opinion it was just a brown trout.

Here I must propound my pet theory, that the so-called ferox and the brown or yellow trout are one and the same species. I have caught, or known caught, a number of large trout out of Loch Maree and other smaller Gairloch lochs, weighing from three to twelve lbs., besides the 21 lb. fish of 1878. I am quite aware of the number of large fish taken during years past in Fionn Loch, and I have shared in the capture of some of them. I know that the greater part of these fish would generally be classed under the head of _Salmo ferox_. I feel sure they were only ordinary trout which had grown to an extraordinary size; many of them were completely out of condition, like a spent salmon; one or two, indeed, were not trout at all, but were spent salmon. I have talked with several old anglers, who professed to know the points of a ferox; none of them agreed in their diagnosis, and the characteristics they tried to point out were obscure, and to my mind not distinctive. Everyone knows that trout vary greatly in size, form, and appearance, according to the nature of the water and the bottom, and the quality and quantity of food. Even from the same loch I have seen trout, taken on the same day, so unlike each other that a tyro would have been pardoned for calling them different species. I have noticed no differences between the so-called ferox and any other large brown trout, that have not corresponded with the differences between various specimens of the smaller fish. It seems to me that whenever some anglers capture a trout above 3 lbs. weight they call it a ferox.

The ordinary loch trout are taken with similar flies to the sea-trout, but if you want the big ones you must troll either natural bait or the artificial minnow. The large brown, or rather black, trout (the so-called ferox) are never worth eating, and are rarely beautiful objects to look at; they would be seldom sought for, but that salmon fishing is so costly that many anglers can only realise the excitement of playing a salmon when they succeed in hooking what they call a _Salmo ferox_.

Sir George Steuart Mackenzie wrote:--"In Loch Maree is that species of trout called the gizzard trout." I suppose he meant the variety commonly called the gilaroo trout, which occurs in a loch near Inchnadamph, in Sutherland. I can only say I never caught one, nor heard of one being caught, in Loch Maree or any other loch in Gairloch.