104 FISHES AND FISHING. 



rapidly rose to the surface, by the buoyancy of the 

 cotton, and the air it contained ; the seed once ex 

 tracted, no fish touched that flock of cotton again. 

 Every one who has watched the motions of the trout 

 as above-mentioned, or the bleak with the flocks of 

 cotton, and their discrimination in never taking one 

 that had had the seed extracted, and hundreds of 

 persons have done so, have involuntarily observed, 

 " what excellent sight fish must have ;" and similar to 

 this may be observed in the motions of chub, roach, 

 and dace, at the top of the water, and many other 

 fish at the bottom. 



About four years ago I revisited the scenes of my 

 childhood ; alas, how changed ! Yandalism had been 

 at work, not only were these curious trees,* which 

 used, in the season, to render the river and land 

 around them a complete sheet of cotton wool, de 

 stroyed, but also the house on the estate with its 

 beautiful painted staircase and ceilings, the splendid 

 orange trees and pleasure grounds, once the abode of 



* These cotton trees, as far as I remember, were more lofty 

 than some large larch trees near them, their trunks were from 

 twenty-seven to thirty-three inches in circumference, the leaves 

 were of a lively yellowish green, small heart-shaped, thin and 

 extremely smooth. From the report of Mr. Wm. Franklin, who 

 wrote on Persia, cotton trees are very common all over that 

 country ; also another, a small tree, which yields a kind of 

 silken down, used for quilting and stuffing pillows. 



