cal life of
to-day, it is a progressive, thriving town, busy, intelligent,
respected and honorable. The two natural features which would
attract, perhaps, the most special attention of the traveller are
the two Inches, North and South, divided by the city. This is a
peculiar Scotch term which an untravelled American will hardly
understand. It has no relation to measurement of any kind; but
signifies what we should call a low, level green or common in or
adjoining a town. The Inches of Perth are, to my eye, the finest in
Scotland, each having about a mile and a half in circumference, and
making delightful and healthy playgrounds and promenades for the
whole population.

On Monday, Sept. 14th, I took staff and set out for another week-
stage of my walk, or from Perth to Inverness. Crossed the Tay and
proceeded northward up the east side of that fertile river. Fertile
may sound at first a singular qualification for a broad, rapid
stream running down out of the mountains and widening into a bay or
firth at its mouth. But it may be applied in the best sense of
production to the Tay; and not only that, but other terms known to
practical agriculture. Up to the present moment, no river in the
world has been cultivated with more science and success. None has
been sown so thickly with seed-vitalities or produced more valuable
crops of aquatic life. Here salmon are hatched by hand and folded
and herded with a shepherd's care. Here pisciculture, or, to use a
far better and more euphonious word, fish-farming, is carried to the
highest perfection in Great Britain. It is a tillage that must
hereafter take its place with agriculture as a great and honored
industry. If the cold, bald-headed mountains, the wild, stony
reaches of poverty-stricken regions, moor, morass, steppe and
prairie are made the pasturage of sheep innumerable, the thousands
of rivers in both hemispheres will not be suffered to run to waste
through another century. The utilitarian genius of the present age
will turn them into pasturage worth more per acre than the value of
the richest land on their banks. Just think of the pasturage of the
Tay. It rents for 14,000 pounds a year; and those who hire it must
make it produce at least 50,000 pounds, or $240,000 annually. Let
us assume that the whole length of this salmon-pasturage is fifty
miles, and its average width one-eighth of a mile. Then the whole
distance would contain the space of 4,000 square