Lochs and Loch Fishing (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Lakk-land And Its Lessons. "And the lake her lone bosom expands to the sky." From Land's End to John tfGroats and from Loch Leven in the east to the loneliest lake in the wilds of Connemara that resigns the setting sun to Indian worlds, Great Britain and Ireland possess lakes that illustrate every variety of freshwater sea found in the temperate zone. It is true that the United Kingdbmi boasts no great lakes like those to be found on the Continent or in North America, but relatively to the land area Great Britain and Ireland possess lakes that, on a small scale, are the same in all essential features as the different varieties of lakes of which the " temperate" world can boast. Of the Scottish lakes themselves it may almost be said that they epitonize the lake-life and physical character of the temperate zone, though naturally their fauna and flora are for the most part peculiar to themselves, while certain species of fish and plants are common to both hemispheres. From the narrower point of view of the oceanographer or lacugrapher to invent a new word, the Scottish lakes form, however, a perfect epitome of all the lakes of the world, and when Sir John Murray has completed his survey of them and published his charts, this fact will be more abundantly established. In the meantime it will suffice to say that in such spreading waters as Loch Lomond, the great chain of lakes running from Loch Ness to the head of Loch Linnhe, Loch Awe, Loch Rannoch, Loch Errochd, and other lakes too numerous to mention in detail, we have samples of the true inland sea in miniature. Smaller lakes of the Loch Vennachar, Loch Lubnaig and Loch Ard type, to name three only of the better known examples, scarcely attain to this dignity, while Lochs Earn and Tav, though deep lakes, occupy...