FOREST, LAKE, AND RIVER 



with their tails ; but I agree with Mr. Prime so 

 far, that I have often seen them do so, and instantly 

 thereafter get caught in the mouth. 



One would have trouble in deciding this ques- 

 tion so as to please both sides. The evidence 

 must be merely of a negative character, unless the 

 witnesses should be speaking of the same particu- 

 lar trout. One man says he has seen trout play 

 cricket, and catch themselves out ; others say they 

 have not seen any such game played. The weight 

 of evidence on either side, therefore, must depend 

 a good deal on who gives it. The testimony of a 

 man who has been, for twenty-five or thirty years, 

 fishing for trout in all sorts of places and under all 

 kinds of circumstances, whose eye has been trained 

 by constant use in the woods, would be worth 

 more than that of a beginner in the art. 



As remarked by a writer in " Forest and Stream," 

 there is nothing so remarkable, however, about a 

 trout's flopping a fly into its mouth with its tail, as 

 there would be if the fly had flopped the trout 

 into the fisherman's mouth, or the fisherman had 

 flopped the trout into the fly's mouth, or the tail 

 had flopped the fly into the fisherman's mouth, or 

 the fly had flopped the tail into the trout's mouth, 

 or the flop had flied the mouth into the trout's tail, 

 or the tail had flied the flop into the trout's mouth, 



248 



