58 ANGLING IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



with its corn and wine and oil, its golden plenty emphasised 

 by a framework of gentle decay. 



The salmon fisher has seen the brown hills brighten 

 with green, and blaze into the regal purple of the heather, 

 and now the rowan tree hangs out its scarlet lamps, 

 and the firs assume a deeper hue. The trout fisher 

 in the bright May days was gladdened by the fragrant 

 hawthorn, and noticed how strong the briony clasped 

 the hedgerow. He saw the blossoms of the wild guelder 

 rose shaken to earth by the lightest summer shower, 

 and the true wild rose in full bearing. Their berries 

 now gleam black and red, those of the guelder rose 

 clustered like drops of blood, while its leaves are veined 

 with every colour of the rainbow. The village children, 

 who months back stood shyly by to watch the landing 

 of the two-pounder that had taken the Red Spinner in the 

 smooth stream above the ford, had sprigs of immature 

 travellers' joy round their hats, and their hands were full 

 of cowslip, ragged robbin, and lady smocks. Their faces 

 are smeared with blackberry stain, and their pinafores 

 turned into receptacles for hazel nuts, as they wonder' 

 why, on that late September evening, you cast your fly so 

 many times through the air before allowing it to touch 

 the water. The punt fisher moored in the Thames above 

 Maidenhead, has, in Bisham, and incomparable Cliveden, 

 a mixture of colours upon the densely wooded hillsides 

 such as mortal hand could never compound. 



The sea-trout fisher is in his glory in the autumn. That 

 last run up of the fish is generally the briskest, and 

 the sea-trout angler has therefore the privilege of leaving 

 off" for the season without the consciousness that it was 

 convenient to make a virtue of necessity. So long as the 

 Sabno trutta is in the river, you do not wear out your 



