186 TROUT FISHING 



The most remarkable incident of the expedition 

 was the humour of the bird. It pounced down 

 upon the artificial fly of one of the anglers. That 

 was no uncommon thing. It had happened to me 

 often. But I had never before heard of a fowl with 

 such a sense of fun that, having seized the fly, it 

 would carry it to the top of a tree and leave it there. 

 If any should doubt, we were told that the fly was 

 there yet, and half a cast with it, and that any one 

 might prove the matter by climbing. 



Another spring visit to the Penydwddwr Arms 

 was spoilt by an exactly opposite condition of 

 affairs, due, it was supposed, to comets, of which 

 there had been much talk. We had many trials 

 that year. Apart from the weather, we found that 

 the local farmers had had a burst of energy and had 

 been consolidating their fences. We spent a good 

 deal of time extricating ourselves from the traps 

 they had set, and it was a warmly discussed problem 

 why barbed wire was necessary as a lining to trout 

 streams, in some places reinforcing stout hedges 

 and serviceable railings, and whether, as one angler 

 gloomily opined, it had been arranged with one 

 eye on beasts and the other on fishermen. 



The Welsh farmer is not invariably sympathetic. 

 Nor are his bulls, of which we discovered an unusual 

 profusion that year. They glowered at us in all 

 sorts of unexpected places. Given plenty of barbed 



