IN THE MIDLANDS. 91 



The Ouse is an excellent pike river, and remarkable for 

 the size and quantity of its bream. For the greater portion 

 of its length until recently it was under no law but that most 

 wholesome law of trespass, which, judiciously enforced, is so- 

 potent a preserver of wood and water when other provisions 

 fail. And there is probably no stream in England which 

 has been more poached than the Ouse. It has been 

 long a recognised custom for men, armed with nets made 

 after a fashion most suitable for the purpose, to undertake a 

 tour as regularly as the spring comes round, and, placing 

 their abominable traps across the mouths of the brooks, to 

 drive down from the long watercourses the fish which have 

 pushed 'their way up to spawn. Literally nothing comes 

 amiss to the net so used ; and as in the level country the 

 little watercourses are narrow and deep and frequent, the 

 brooks and ditches are capital breeding grounds. 



A gentleman last March in Huntingdonshire, riding 

 leisurely home after a day with the hounds, leaped one of 

 these yard- wide watercourses and started a poacher who was 

 hiding under a bush. The marauder had been using the 

 net above described, and in his dirty sack were several pike 

 of about two pounds' weight, and one fine fish of over 

 twenty-four pounds, quite out of condition and heavy with 

 spawn. To be sure the rights of property must be preserved, 

 and if the farmers and other occupiers of the land have no 

 objection to this sort offish murder there is nothing more to 

 be said. 



But that spirit of preservation which in a former chapter 

 I mentioned as so beneficial to the Thames is not confined 

 to metropolitan head-quarters. In all parts of the country, 

 rivers, to foul and poach which the public from time 



