156 THE WONDERFUL TROUT 



ful and made a fair or even a good basket, 

 another equally good angler using precisely 

 similar flies has had scarcely a rise. It seems 

 difficult to say with any degree of certainty 

 how far such experiences are due to simply a 

 local hatch-off of flies. A river contains pre- 

 sumably a greater number of lies for trout, 

 at least a greater number of specially favour- 

 able lies for individual fish, than the more 

 even and less variable shallows of a loch. 



SOME EFFECTS OF AN ABNORMAL SEASON 



The independent study of separate branches 

 of natural history and science often reveals 

 many simple laws of nature binding all these 

 various branches together in a wonderful way 

 not before suspected. We may instance this 

 in a somewhat marked manner during this 

 year of cold and abnormal summer and east 

 winds (1898). Indeed, such an abnormal 

 state of the seasons often provides food for 

 the mind, and reveals, on account of con- 

 trasts, the laws of Nature, which succession 

 of normal seasons fails to do, because these 

 laws are not sufficiently accentuated. 



