REARING 205 



the monasteries, properly kept up and cultivated and 

 were made to produce well-tasting fish during the 

 seasons of fasting. 



The Weston moat has once again become ' a thing 

 of beauty,' and, as I hope, 'a joy for ever.' At any 

 rate it produces annually a rich harvest of fat two- 

 year-old trout, whose gambols on a summer evening 

 are certainly more enlivening than the torpid move- 

 ments of a carp, which though extolled by Isaac 

 Walton as ' the queen of rivers, a stately, a good, and 

 a very subtil fish,' 1 has so far fallen from her high 

 estate that, according to an eminent writer of modern 

 times, she may often ' be seen lying among the weeds 

 at the surface of the water at which she lazily sucks, 

 making a very distinct noise which has been likened 

 to that produced by a pig.' 2 



I have said that a set of trout-ponds should be 

 one of the attractive features of your place, but I will 

 give you a word of warning, and being on dangerous 

 ground, I will screen myself behind high authority. 



* If the reader must have a pair of swans to look 

 pretty, let him get a skilful taxidermist to stuff him 

 a pair as life-like as possible ; he may even, to 

 render the illusion more real, put some clockwork 



1 The Complete Angler. 



2 The Fishes of Great Britain and Ireland, by Francis Day. 



