194 SUMMER 



as scrupulous as his own, and to whom the very foundation 

 of his cult is that the trout of dry-fly streams feed habitually 

 on floating flies. 



To inspect the diet of trout when they gorge themselves 

 in a flood, which scours all kinds of food from the floor 

 of the valley, it is not necessary to clean one's fish oneself 

 before they are cooked. Often when a trout is landed part 

 of its most recent meal is still sticking out of its mouth. 

 Earthworms form the staple of the feast at flood-time ; the 

 rain and rising waters flood out the worms and wash them 

 downstream to the fish watching in the eddies. But besides 

 worms trouts' mouths shed at such times a strange medley 

 of beetles, caterpillars, fish-spawn, and young fish, and the 

 remains of the harder and tougher flies such as ' creeper ' or 

 nymphal stonefly. The rapid digestion of a trout is not 

 fast enough for its appetite ; it will sometimes come for the 

 fisherman's fly with the tail of a smaller brother still sticking 

 out of its mouth. Astonishing, too, is the size of the trout 

 which are swallowed. In a Hebridean loch the writer has 

 caught with a sea-trout fly a plump and healthy brown trout 

 of about fifteen inches, from the mouth of which when landed 

 there protruded the headless and tailless spine of another 

 trout, which before digestion began must have measured at 

 least ten inches, or two-thirds of its captor's own size. Yet 

 in spite of such a crocodilish feat there is nothing treacher- 

 ous or repellent in a healthy trout, as there is about the lean 

 and slinking pike. The trout has the inspiring vigour of the 

 mountain torrent, and the clean brightness of the chalk 

 or limestone stream ; the activity of its chosen waters 

 passes into its firm yet rounded flesh, and it is far less of 

 a murderer than a fighter. Large trout in slow and easy 

 waters may grow comparatively dull and lethargic, and on 

 the whole the smaller the trout the keener is its spirit. The 



