112 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



diem for their own maintenance, putting out of the question five times as 

 much which they take at breeding time. That would give a little total 

 of f oiurteen or fifteen hundred trout a year. Rather a heavy toll that ! Ah ! 

 got him again." 



Eight or ten more fish come to grass, and the green sward begins to 

 look lively. Then, after an hour's sport, they go off again, and I take the 

 opportunity to go down to the other hole at the other end of the field, 

 and put in a few balls of bait in case we should want it. It is quite as good 

 as this one ; but, unfortunately, there is only standing room and fishing for 

 one, as the fence comes down there, and we can't go beyond it; but the 

 hole runs down some sixty yards or so, and is very capacious, holding 

 plenty of large fish. 



I mind me once a misfortune of a peculiarly exasperating kind 

 happening when I went down to that swim. The upper swim here is at 

 one end of the field and the lower at the other end, about three hundred 

 yards or so apart, and as the river bends and there are trees between, you 

 cannot see one swim, from the other. One day I had just begun to fish the 

 upper swim when I bethought me I would just run down and pop two or 

 three balls of bait into the lower one, so as to lose no time in getting the 

 fish on, when I felt inclined to shift. I made up the balls and walked down 

 to the lower swim, leaving my baskets on the ground behind me. When 

 I got down there there was some regulating of the stream required, which 

 is effected by putting rubbish into it between an old fallen pollard which has 

 fallen in some fifteen or twenty yards above, and it took me a quarter of 

 an hour or more to collect the rubbish. When I had fitted it all to my 

 satisfaction I turned around to go back. 



There were some cows in the field. Now I don't know whether any one 

 else has observed it, but the female nature of the cow is strongly evidenced 

 by her curiosity. I don't think in nature there is a beast more saturated 

 with curiosity than a cow. Leave any unusual object in a field within 

 sight, and I wdll warrant that in ten minutes every cow will come and have 

 a stare at it. Leave a rod standing upright, and if one catches a gleam of 

 the varnish you shall likely enough find damage to your tackle when you 

 return. When I got about midway back to my swim I came in sight of it. 



