THE SALMON FAMILY. 201 



victim protruding from the mouth of the fish ; choked as he 

 was with the lizard, he seized my fly. The little worm 

 hatched from the egg of the fly (which a few days before, 

 as she dapped on the surface of the water, she deposited at 

 the risk of her life), is devoured with its little house of sand, 

 in which, by the aid of its gluten, it encases itself Hence 

 the quantity of sand found in a Trout's stomach, in the early 

 months of fly-fishing. The grasshopper is a good big mouth- 

 ful ; and sometimes as the angler grasps his prize, to disen- 

 gage the hook, he feels them crush like rumpled paper, as if 

 wings and legs were cracking beneath his fingers. 



In watching the glassy surface of pools in the still of the 

 evening, we see Trout dimpling the water with diverging 

 circles, as they rise and suck in the little midge, or gray gnat, 

 too small to be seen in the distance by the human eye. In 

 every still water, or eddy, or hurrying rift, or under the 

 shelving edges of stones, he searches for larva, diligent in 

 earning his living "by the small;" or from his lair under 

 ledge of rock or overhanging bank, he watches for larger 

 prey as it floats past, seizing it with unerring and lightning- 

 like rapidity. 



Concerning the disposition of Trout to rise at a fly after 

 having previously escaped from the angler with a hook 

 fastened in its mouth, I would say that some years ago I 

 took a Trout of ten inches out of a tumbling little hole 

 under some alder-bushes, and to my surprise found what I 

 thought to be a bristle sticking out of its mouth. On pulling 

 hard on it, I drew the stomach of the fish up into its throat, 

 and found the supposed bristle to be a stout piece of silk- 

 worm gut, four or five inches long, and a pretty ginger 

 hackle on the end of it. I disengaged it, and on showing it 

 to my fishing companion, he recognised it as his own drop -fly 

 which a fish had broken from his leader, in the hole I 



