SPKJWG RAMBLES 57 



ancestral trees. They began at once to pull down 

 their old nests, cleared them right away, and now 

 they have disappeared entirely. 1 



Last week my bad luck as to weather pursued 

 me down to Hampshire. Hither, to my old haunt 

 on the Itchen, I came, full of hope, for some Whit- 

 suntide trout fishing. I have had a bad beginning. 

 On Friday afternoon the wind and rain were dead 

 against me, and there was nothing doing to en- 

 courage a dry-fly man to hope for the most modest 

 success ; not a rise could be seen, and yet there was 

 apparently an abundance of flies, driven hither and 

 thither by the ceaseless wind. The swallows were 

 outrageously greedy. Over and over again would 

 they pick up my fly from the water, and drop it like 

 a nasty thing. I had armed myself, to begin with, 

 with the fly so highly spoken of by Sir E. Grey, and 

 which may be called Sir E. Grey's Black Spider? 

 With it I soon captured a brace of grayling, which I 

 did not want. Thinking it was perhaps more attrac- 

 tive to grayling (which abound), I rashly changed it 

 for a nice Yellow Dun. I played at floating fly in a 

 " chuck-and-chance-it " sort of way for what else 

 can a dry-fly man do when there is nothing visible 



1 Last spring (that is a year afterwards) they came back to survey 

 their old home ; they did not build, but I have observed that ever 

 since then they come there every evening to roost probably next 

 year they will build again, they could not find a safer or more 

 charming abode. 



2 Sir E. Grey only recommends the Black Spider for a warm, 

 quiet evening, when the trout are rising, but refuse the ordinary 

 Dun. 



