48 SOUTH COUNTRY TROUT STREAMS 



more modern anglers have made in respect to 

 the salmon : and again, " Sir George Hastings, 

 an excellent angler, now with God . . . hath 

 told me he thought that trout {i.e., the only Ford- 

 wich trout ever captured by our angler) bit not 

 for hunger but wantonness ; and it is rather to be 

 believed because both he, them, and many others 

 before him, have been curious to search into their 

 bellies, what the food was by which they lived ; 

 and have found out nothing by which they might 

 satisfy their curiosity." Another old angling 

 author writes of the Fordwich trout as differing 

 from all others " in many considerables, as great- 

 ness, colour, cutting white instead of red when in 

 season, not being takeable with an angle, and 

 abiding nine months in the sea, whence they 

 observe their coming up almost to a day." The 

 long and short of these fish stories is that the old 

 writers confused the brown trout with the sea 

 trout and possibly the grilse, which ascended the 

 Stour in due season. The famous " Fordwich 

 trout," which to this day some people are half in- 

 clined to believe in, no doubt was, and indeed still 

 is, either one or the other of these sea-going fish. 

 Probably many more sea trout and grilse ascended 

 the Stour formerly than at the present time ; but 

 both species are still taken by nets in the estuary of 

 the river near Pegwell Bay, and Mr. Pine informs me 

 he believes he has seen some as high as Fordwich. 

 The Stour, after passing Minster and Sandwich, 

 flows to the North Sea through wide marshes, where 

 flourish the great reed grasses used for thatching 

 and even fencing^ — a wild and desolate region. 



^ Out of the Test rushes a useful and beautifully finished- 

 off basket is made in the neighbourhood of Longparish. 



