THE WELSH BORDERLAND 



balance. Still a vague and no doubt erroneous feeling 

 that a captured grayling makes room for an extra 

 trout removes any compunction to basketing just as 

 many as you can catch, or on those occasions hinted 

 at, as you can carry — even to keeping the little ones. 



Thymallus is a queer customer. No one who knows 

 him, so far as he allows himself to be known, denies 

 that. He is in truth rather a mysterious beast. It 

 will generally be noted in technical works on angling 

 that the wise men write with intimacy about trout. 

 But if you read a chapter on grayling a little between 

 the lines, you will see at once that the writers are not 

 on nearly such frank terms with their subject and 

 do not pretend to analyse it so exhaustively. There 

 is, in short, a good deal left to the imagination, and 

 that is quite honest, for it is the only thing to be done. 

 I am not of course alluding to the life and habits of 

 the grayling, but to its impulses and attitude towards 

 the angler on the bank. For my part I have assuredly 

 nothing fresh or original to contribute. The more 

 grayling I catch the less I seem to know about the 

 workings of their mind, and while correcting this very 

 chapter for the press I have yet further to admit 

 that I know less about the grayHng than I thought I 

 did when I wrote it but a few months since ! As 

 practical jokers, for instance, the trout cannot touch 

 his prolific cousin, though happily this keen sense of 

 humour does not seem to extend itself to the denizens 

 of the Lugg. I have fished nearly all day upon the 

 Tin and risen hundreds of grayHng to every known 

 grayling fly, and except by a rare and occasional 

 accident never touched one. And what is more, I hai'e 



139 



