174 SALMON AND TROUT. 



If brooks or rivers are not at hand, he and madam ferox provide 

 heirs to the estate in some nice gravelly or sandy creek of the lake. 

 For this I can answer, having frequently been a witness of their 

 connubial happiness, standing with hymeneal torch in hand over 

 the nuptial bed on a dark November night. How many seasons 

 the amiable couple may live to visit the gravel beds is rather a 

 difficult question to answer. The registry of births, deaths, and 

 marriages in such remote and obscure places as the depths of a 

 ' great lake ' furnishes but doubtful data for the statistics of the 

 ages of the population. Neither have we, in this case, the ( equine 

 marks' of the teeth, or the 'annual vegetable rings' to appeal to. 

 The probability is that the happy pair live to a good round age, 

 though it might be imprudent to reduce it to figures. The pounds 

 avoirdupois which they are found to weigh, after they attain a 

 respectable size, may possibly give a fair approximation to their 

 respective ages. 



Sooner or later, however, the day of decline arrives. Fly 

 fishing or trolling, I have hooked during the season occasional 

 specimens of a long, tapering, large-headed animal ; all skin, bone, 

 and fins, like a flying fish, but languid in his movements, voracious 

 in his appetite, and seemingly indifferent to his fate. Shall the 

 melancholy fact be recorded? it is our once gallant friend, ferox, 

 who would in better days run out forty yards of line in a breath, 

 spring from the lowest depths of his domain above the surface with 

 fly or roach in his mouth, and contemptuously turn up his nose 

 half a dozen of times at a net or gaff; but now, alas, wabbling 

 about like a miserable snig in his dotage and decrepitude ! And 

 as if this were not sufficient humiliation for the pride and paragon 

 of inland waters, the rustic fishers, no more respectful of his cha- 

 racter than the ichthyologists, have combined to call him in this 

 state a ' piper.' Date obolum Belisario gently remove the hook 

 from his aged jaws ; return him safely to his native element, and 

 crown the deed of charity by sending after him as many loaches as 

 you can spare. When you next visit the lake you will probably 

 witness his obsequies performed and his bones picked by a merci- 

 less group of seagulls and scarecrows, screaming and howling over 

 his remains, as they are buffeted about by the waves. Such is the 

 natural end of ferox full of indignities, indeed, but from which it 

 is consoling to reflect that the insensibility of death has plucked 

 the sting ! 



The food of this distinguished member of his family, like his 



