GROWING THE LARGE TROUT. 233 



prevent a resolute thief from climbing over and getting 

 the fish, if he has made up his mind that he will have 

 them, but it nevertheless reduces the number very 

 much of the dangerous ones, and limits them to the 

 very enterprising only. There are a hundred poachers 

 who will steal up and throw their lines into an open 

 pond, where there is one who will bring a ladder and 

 scale a bpiked fence and descend on the other side, 

 where he does not know how many spring guns, or bull- 

 dogs, or what not, there may be inside to receive him. 

 A spiked enclosure lessens the chances of loss by 

 poaching very much. 



Fourthly, there is at the Cold Spring Trout Ponds 

 a dog whose ferocity I have never seen surpassed 

 except in a chained tiger (one of Van Amburgh's) 

 at a menagerie we once visited, and who is as stanch 

 and as incorruptible as he is ferocious. This dog 

 " Jack " is the last thing in the world a poacher would 

 like to encounter in a spiked enclosure, and adds very 

 much, I think, to the safety of the fish. He is cer- 

 tainly a terror to all who know him. It is true a watch- 

 dog can be shot or poisoned, and so be got out of the 

 way ; but he is at least another barrier to danger, and 

 as long as he lives, at all events, he is a protection. 



There are other safeguards inside of the fence which 

 are disclosed only to the poachers themselves, but 

 which make the way of the transgressor exceedingly 

 perilous. We would add here that the racks which 

 are put over the ponds to keep off the birds are also 

 a protection against a line being thrown over the fence 

 among the trout. But for all the protection of these 



