114 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



BY THE EXE. 



The whortleberry bushes are almost as thick as the 

 heather in places on the steep, rocky hills that overlook 

 the Exe. Feeding on these berries when half ripe is 

 said to make the heath poults thin (they are acid), so 

 that a good crop of whortleberries is not advantageous 

 to the black game. Deep in the hollow the Exe winds 

 and bends, finding a crooked way among the ruddy 

 rocks. Sometimes an almost inaccessible precipice 

 rises on one shore, covered with firs and ferns, which 

 no one can gather ; while on the other is a narrow but 

 verdant strip of mead. Coming down in flood from 

 the moors the Exe will not wait to run round its curves, 

 but rushes across the intervening corner, and leaves 

 behind, as it subsides, a mass of stones, fiat as slates 

 or scales, destroying the grass. But the fiy-fisherman 

 seeks the spot because the water is swift at the angle 

 of the stream and broken by a ledge of rock. He can 

 throw up stream — the line falls soft as silk on the slow 

 eddy below the rock, and the fly is drawn gently 

 towards him across the current. When a natural fly 

 approaches the surface of running water, and flutters 

 along just above it, it encounters a light air, which 



