UNLUCKY DAYS IN WALES. 233 



king, rents a large section of the Usk, and is one of the 

 most enthusiastic of its anglers. On the 22nd of October, 

 1874, he himself other members of his family also killing 

 fish caught nine salmon a male of twenty-two pounds 

 hooked in the pectoral fin, a female of sixteen pounds at the 

 same time and place, also caught by the pectoral fin, a 

 female of nineteen pounds hooked in the side, and the 

 remainder all hen fish taken in the ordinary way thirteen 

 pounds, ten pounds, eight pounds, five and a half pounds, 

 four and a half pounds, and four pounds total 102 pounds. 

 To the recreation of angling Mr. Crawshay adds that of 

 photography, as frequenters of our art exhibitions will 

 remember, and he makes the one wait upon the other in a 

 manner very interesting to the pisciculturist. The whole of 

 the salmon taken on the day specified he photographed, 

 for scientific purposes. The three largest were photo- 

 graphed separately on an extended scale and partly opened, 

 so as to show the precise condition of the fish in spawn. 

 The roe in the nineteen pounder appears ingeniously exposed 

 in its natural position ; it weighed three pounds ten ounces, 

 and as the number of ova in one ounce is 380, the eggs in 

 this one salmon numbered 22,040. 



Frost in February is not out of the course of nature, but 

 what say you to a Whit-Monday hailstorm ? Was that the 

 reception the mountains of North Wales should have given 

 to a confiding man who had travelled two hundred and 

 thirty miles to pay them (and their water-basins) due 

 homage? Yet even so it happened. On the Saturday 

 previous I had diligently fished up the meadows of Nant 

 Ffrancon, or the Beaver's Hollow, content with a satisfactory 

 basket of small trout, revelling in the wild loneliness of the 



