34 SOUTH COUNTRY TROUT STREAMS 



their yellow sides and peacock backs lunged away 

 in the eddies, and the silver grayling dimpled 

 and wandered among the shallows, and the may 

 flies flickered and rustled round him like water 

 fairies with their green gauzy wings ; the coot 

 clanked musically among the reeds ; the frogs 

 hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone ; the 

 kingfisher darted from a hole in the bank like a 

 spark of electric light ; the swallows' bills snapped 

 as they twined and hawked above the pool ; the 

 swifts' wings whirred like musket balls as they 

 rushed past his head ; and ever the river fleeted 

 by bearing his eyes away down the current, till its 

 wild eddies began to glow with crimson beneath 

 the setting sun." It is a scene such as most 

 anglers who know any of our chalk streams have 

 witnessed and gloried in at May-fly time. It was 

 not the Hampshire Test, I fancy, which Kingsley 

 had in mind when writing this description ; but it is 

 perhaps in some of the upper reaches of that 

 perfect river that the chalk stream scenery most 

 absolutely fascinates the lover of nature as well as 

 of angling. When the springs are full and the 

 meadows and commons in many places, even at 

 some little distance from the stream, have a way 

 of unpleasantly reminding too slenderly shod 

 anglers and searchers after nature's treasures of 

 this abundance of water, then is the time in fine 

 weather to see the summer Test at its fairest ; then 

 and sometimes a little later, too, in July and early 

 August, before the season shows the least signs of 

 decay. 



The more water there is in the marshy places 

 by the river side, the more greenery and the greater 

 wealth of insect, bird, and plant life. It has 



