A GENERAL SURVEY. 23 



kept secret by them, sometimes keep up very ample stores 

 of surreptitious trout. But the true trouting counties are 

 comparatively few. Beginning with the south, Cornwall 

 may be passed by with a brief reference, although all the 

 streams trickling down from the backbone of the hills 

 which constitute the Cornish highlands, contain more or 

 less of trout. Devonshire is quite another matter. Its 

 larger trout rivers are numerous, and salmon are taken 

 in Taw and Torridge, in Exe and Tavy, while the interior 

 is intersected in all directions with lively little streams. 

 There are a few strictly preserved trout streams in Dorset- 

 shire, and a good salmon river in the Stour, which joins 

 itself with the Avon at Christchurch, the Avon itself being 

 swelled by a famous grayling river, the Wiley, from the 

 Salisbury Plain region. 



The largest river in Great Britain, and the one to which 

 most importance is attached by the main body of general 

 anglers, is, of course, the Thames, with its magnificent 

 watershed representing a basin of over six thousand miles. 

 It is not so long as the Severn by some twenty odd miles, 

 but it is fed by a rich array of tributaries right and left. 

 In its higher portions, under the influence of the Cotswold 

 hills, there are the Windrush and Coin, both capital trout 

 streams. In the Kennet, the most important of its southern 

 tributaries, the richest specimens to be found in England 

 of the Sabno fario are taken. To all London anglers the 

 Roden, the Lea, the Colne, Wick, and Thame are familiar, 

 while the trout and trout fishing of the Wandle and 

 Darenth, the one on the west and the other on the east 

 side of southern London, but both almost within hearing 

 of the roar of its, traffic, are traditional. In the midlands 

 there are the brilliant Derbyshire streams, which may be 

 considered midway, in physical characteristics, between the 



