8 FISHES AND FISHING. 



under the estimated weight of three quarters of a 

 pound. My father kept an account of all the trout 

 he killed during nine years, and to whom he gave 

 them, and I have heard him say, in after-years, that 

 he generally took two hundred brace per annum. 



The water which gave motion to the wheels of the 

 mill, was discharged into the creek leading into the 

 Thames ; and one day, when I was about four years 

 old, my father was leading me along at the back of 

 the furnaces, where there was an open door, facing 

 and nearly down to the water of the creek when the 

 tide was up. I was frightened, and my parent 

 startled, by a large fish, a salmon, springing in 

 through the door, and falling nearly amongst the 

 cinders of the furnace ; my father secured the fish, 

 which weighed 14lbs. About a year after that, I 

 was disturbed, very early one morning, by a consider 

 able noise, and when I went down to breakfast, there 

 lay on a table in the great marble entrance-hall, a 

 large salmon, above 20 Ibs. as I was told, which had 

 been captured close to the mansion-house, having 

 come up with the spring tide, and endeavoured to get 

 upward ; but being discovered by one of my father's 

 men, he aroused his master, and they two placed a 

 net behind it, and when the tide receded, it became 

 an easy prey. Often large salmon were killed by the 

 water-wheels in trying to go up stream ; this demon* 



