678 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK 



whose fountains are everywhere amongst these rugged hilis, 

 are their proper home. What an ignorant fellow Poietes 

 was to ask Halieus if the red spots on a Trout were not 

 "marks of disease — a hectic kind of beauty?" Any boy 

 along the creek knows better. And what a pedantic old 

 theorist Sir Humphrey was, to tell him that the absence of 

 these spots was a sign of high condition. Well, it may be in 

 England, for the river Trout there, are a different species 

 from ours. But I'll bet my old rod against a bob-fly that 

 there is twice as much pluck and dash in our little fellows 

 with the "hectic" spots. I don't wonder that Trout like these 

 so inspired Mr. Barnwell, who wrote the " Game Fish of 

 the North," when, with his fancy in high feather, he mounted 

 his Pegasus and went off' — "How splendid is the sport to 

 deftly throw the long line and small fly, with the pliant 

 single-handed rod, and with eye and nerve on the strain, to 

 watch the loveliest darling of the wave, the spotted naiad, 

 dart from her mossy bed, leap high into the air, carrying the 

 strange deception in her mouth, and, turning in her flight, 

 plunge back to her crystal home." 



Julius Caesar! what "high-flying" Trout this gentleman 

 must have met with in his time. Now, I never saw a Trout 

 "dart from her mossy bed," because I never found Trout to 

 lie on a bed of that sort ; nor " leap high into the air, and 

 turning in her flight plunge back," as a fish-hawk does. In 

 fact, I may safely say I never saw a Trout soai^ more than 

 eight or ten inches above its "crystal home." I honor 

 " Barnwell" for the Anglomania which has seized him — he 

 has been inoculated with a good scab, and the virus has pene- 

 trated his system : but I can't help being reminded by his 

 description, of the eloquence of a member of a country 

 debating society in Kentucky, who commenced — "Happiness, 

 Mr. President, is like a crow situated on some far-distant 



