MAY. 143 



their sight." Worms, minnows, boiled horsebeans, 

 cadis, and oakworm (cynips), and gentles, are his 

 baits. The chub will this month take flies, snails, 

 beetles with the legs off, and the black bee, which 

 builds in clay walls : his haunts are streams shaded 

 with trees. The tench is well taken this month, with 

 a red worm, a lob-worm, well-scoured gentle, or a 

 green caterpillar shook from a tree. But the pride 

 of May angling is the trout ; which, however, is not 

 perfectly prime till next month. Cloudy weather, 

 a little windy, especially from the south, is in high 

 favour with the trouter, because the streams which 

 this beautiful fish inhabit are usually not deep, and 

 very clear, thereby exposing the angler entirely to 

 his quick eye. The finest old trouts, however, are 

 taken in the night with a worm, being too shy to 

 come out of their holes, or to rise in the day ; they 

 are often taken by torch light in Hampshire, as 

 salmon are in Scotland, striking them down with a 

 spear. 



Flies. The oakfly to be found from the begin- 

 ning of this month to the end of August, on the bole 

 of an oak or ash, always standing head downwards : 

 the hawthornfly, a small black fly : the Turkeyfly, 

 red and yellow; alderfly, and the great hackle. 

 These are chiefly stone flies, or phryganese. 



