76 A BIRD COLLECTOR’S MEDLEY. 
weight to two pounds eight ounces within the week. Verily the licence allowed 
to anglers is more illimitable than that of poets ! 
Good fishing is always to be had from Dennabridge onwards to the Dart- 
meet, where the beauty of the scenery is proverbial. Besides trout and 
samlet, fair-sized peel are frequently captured in the evening, and another 
well-known denizen of the stream is the otter. I had the good fortune to 
watch one sporting for some time amidst the rapids below Wistman’s Wood. 
There are not many species of the smaller birds to be met with, though Larks, 
Pipits, and Wheatears abound, and the Dipper “flaunts his white waistcoat”’ 
beside nearly all the swift-running streams. According to Morris, most of 
the rare Hawks have been secured in the neighbourhood, and the Buzzard is 
said to breed there still, but though Kestrels were quite common’, we our- 
selves saw none of the larger species. 
On Sunday morning it is possible to obtain admission to the Convict 
Chapel, where about seven hundred prisoners assemble, and the effect of the 
men’s voices in the hymns is most impressive. The hills of Dartmoor have 
ere now echoed back other shots than those of the sportsman, and time was when 
three of these unfortunates were shot in one morning while trying to escape. 
Of another it is told that, having eloped during an opportune mist, he spent 
the night in running before the wind, which shifted steadily, and landed him 
at daybreak within four hundred yards of the prison. 
The subjoined Latin elegy, culled from the golden treasury of a cottage 
visitors’ book, gives a not altogether untrue summary of the sporting capa- 
bilities of the neighbourhood. Can we suppose that the use of the perfect 
genuit in the eighth line suggests the ill-natured cynicism of some disgusted 
angler, who had toiled in vain for anything larger than a six-inch fish, the 
smallest size at which they can legally be transferred to the creel? If so, we 
think others may be found to sympathize, though perhaps unjustly, with his 
plaint. In any case, we can appreciate the monotonous jingle of the closing 
line, in which the poet does justice to the vapours characteristic of the locality, 
for Dartmoor is pre-eminently the land of fogs. Below we give the lines for 
what they are worth. 
Carcer ubi triplex nebulosis montibus exstat, 
Copia venandi est, quaerite si quis amat. 
Hie si forte jJuvat scolopacem figere telis 
dis horrenda palus Foxtoriensis adest, 
Sed cave ne scolopax fallat te gurgite captum 
dum miser obscoenos fundis ab ore modos. 
Squamigeram calatho si cura est cogere praedam, 
ingentes genuit Dartia Salmonidas. 
Haec tibi contingent interdum, numine fausto, 
omnibus omnitegens tempus in omne vapor. 
