248 THE TROUT 



to eat him. Local palates profess patriotic admira- 

 tion for the bloated monsters, familiar acquaintances 

 of habitual anglers, who have eluded for years the 

 parochial poachers. When one of them is landed at 

 last and borne off to the village alehouse, he is made 

 the object of a triumph, and the excuse for a carouse. 

 But what can you expect of a fish which, like some 

 sedentary men of letters, has never taken a yard of 

 exercise, or swam a stroke when he could help it ? 

 He has been battening all his indolent days on 

 newts and tadpoles and fouler garbage ; and lurking, 

 when dyspeptical and off the feed, in the slime under 

 the tangled roots of some alder copse suggestive of 

 a malarious mangrove swamp in the sweltering delta 

 of the oil rivers. Test him by his shape, and he 

 has run to head and stomach, narrow-shouldered, 

 and pot-bellied, black and leprous almost loathsome, 

 How different from his lively congeners who run 

 out the line with a salmon-rush, and have fought to 

 the death before they were landing-netted ! The 

 choicest trout have the graceful proportions of the 

 aquatic athlete, and though the tints and speckling 

 may be varied, they are invariably rich and lustrous. 

 For trout change their tints like the chameleon, 

 though less suddenly, and faithfully reflect the colours 

 and characteristics of their feeding grounds. They 



