Lochleven

Lochleven, a beautiful oval lake of Kinross-shire, 23 miles NNW. of Edinburgh. Lying 353 feet above sea-level, and engirt by Benarty (1167 feet), the West Lomond (1713), and other hills, it measures $3\backslash frac\{3\}\{8\}$ miles by 2; discharges by the Leven, flowing 16 miles eastward to the Firth of Forth; is 10 to 90 feet deep; and has an area of 3406 acres, drainage operations having reduced its size by one-fourth in 1826-36. Of seven islands, the largest are sandy, treeless St Serf's Inch, an early seat of the Culdees (q.v.), and Castle Island, with the 14th-century keep of a castle which in 1567-68 was for ten months the prison of Mary Queen of Scots. Since 1633 and earlier the loch has been famous for its delicate pink-fleshed trout, and since 1856 for its fly-fishing, there now being twenty boats on it, and some fifty annual angling competitions, whilst the yearly take has varied from 6092 trout of 5385 lb. in 1877 to 23,516 of 21,074 lb. in 1888, and 10,933 of 9201 lb. in 1890. See Robert Burns-Begg's History of Lochleven Castle (2d ed. Kinross, 1877). See also LEVEN (LOCH); and for Lochs Lomond, Long, &c., see LOMOND, &c.