TROUT FISHING 



each. All below that weight we throw in, as is our rule here ; 

 but you may have remarked that none of them exceeded half 

 a pound ; that they were almost all about herring size. The 

 smaller ones I believe to be year-old fish, hatched last spring 

 twelve months ; the pound fish two-year olds. At what rate 

 these last would have increased, depends very much, I suspect, 

 on their chance of food. The limit of life and growth in cold- 

 blooded animals seems to depend very much on their amount 

 of food. The boa, alligator, shark, pike and I suppose the 

 trout also, will live to a great age, and attain an enormous size, 

 give them but range enough ; and the only cause why there 

 are trout of ten pounds and more in the Thames lashers, while 

 one of four pounds is rare here, is simply that the Thames fish 

 has more to eat. Here, were the fish not sufficiently thinned 

 out every year by anglers, they would soon become large- 

 headed, brown, and flabby, and cease to grow. Many a good 

 stream has been spoilt in this way, when a Squire has unwisely 

 preferred quantity to quality of fish.' 



Let us turn from the chalk stream of the south to the lake 

 of the north. This is Mr. Gathorne Hardy's story of a day on 

 Loch-na-Larich : — 



' Travellers who have been in the Holy Land describe the 

 Sea of Galilee as being of the shape of a harp, and the same 

 simile will give a good idea of the little mountain tarn which 

 breaks upon my view in a cup of the hills below Cruach Lussa. 

 There is no bloom yet upon the heather which clothes the moors 

 around it, as it is early June, but the young bracken is shooting 

 up through last year's withered fronds ; and the small birch 

 trees which fringe the opposite side of the little bay at the near 

 end are brilliant with their early green. Great kingcups shine 

 like stars among the stones at the side, and the sandpipers 

 busily flit from rock to rock, while the air is musical with their 

 voices, and the louder bubbling breeding-season note of the 

 curlew which hovers over the opposite brae. Two or three 

 mallards fly away as we approach, and a matronly duck leads 

 a numerous brood of some eleven tiny balls of down into the 



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