THE KENT STREAMS 53 



little assailed the sunk fly may be relied upon to kill 

 in the early part of the season in most streams. I 

 have found no fly better than the olive dun or 

 olive quill on the Darenth with a sedge towards 

 night. An experienced Darenth angler gives the 

 following list of artificial flies for this stream : — • 

 blue, olive, and yellow duns, olive quill, red quill, 

 governor, Wickham's fancy, May-fly with wings of 

 summer duck, coachman, cowdung, alder and sedge. 

 I have noticed the following natural flies on the 

 water : May-fly, olive or blue dun, yellow dun, 

 little may dun, Welshman's button and sedge. 



The Cray must once have been a fine trout 

 stream, and even to-day it retains some vestiges of 

 its former greatness. It has been a good The 

 deal polluted, however, and its volume of ^^^v 

 water has sadly deteriorated, so that I hesitated 

 before giving it a place in the list of South Country 

 trout streams. The Cray rises at Orpington, and 

 runs a nine-mile course through the several Crays, 

 Bexley, and Crayford to the Darenth, which it joins 

 a mile below Dartford. The flow of water at Orping- 

 ton used to be so considerable as to sometimes 

 flood the village, but the springs have now been not 

 a little reduced or lowered. There are still trout in 

 the stream at Bexley and at Messrs. Joynson's large 

 paper mills ; but the fish, at the latter place, are 

 scarcely the genuine old Cray trout, which had red 

 flesh and were reputed to be very excellent for the 

 table. Mr. Joynson has kindly given me some in- 

 formation respecting the Cray and its trout, which 

 I cannot do better than quote in his own words. 

 " Some years ago," he writes, " before the Kent 

 Waterworks sunk their wells at Orpington, the 

 river Cray had plenty of water and some excellent 



