THE COOKERY OF THE TROUT 247 



in check by the occasional swoop of the osprey. As 

 may be supposed, these troutlets are chiefly skin and 

 bone, but they are sweet and savoury so far as they 

 go. It is pitiful to see how greedily they will jump 

 at the flies trailing in the wake of the artificial otter. 

 Yet we believe the starvelings would make a deli- 

 cate dish were they dressed by a clever artist & la 

 blanchaille. They are not much bigger than whitebait, 

 early in the season, nor would they come much short 

 of the inimitable sardines on the Mediterranean coasts 

 if fried in batter and served with frizzled parsley 

 There is a marked improvement in the trout of the 

 moorland burn which has its chilly sources in the 

 tarns. The otter, sated with salmon and sea-trout, 

 the most fastidious of four-footed gourmets, deems 

 it worth his while to include them in his nocturnal 

 prowlings, and the dreamy heron, ever intent upon 

 business, is often to be seen on the rocky shelf over- 

 hanging some limpid pool. Between those Highland 

 rills and the chalk streams of the southland coun- 

 ties, we come upon trout of many sorts and condi- 

 tions. They may be generally estimated from the 

 gastronomic point of view by shape and colouring, 

 for size is no criterion. We have seen a two-pounder 

 taken out of a drain on a rushy common, and we 

 should have been sorry to condemn our worst enemy 



