64 SOUTH COUNTRY TROUT STREAMS 



about I lb., but they run up to 2 lbs. and occasion- 

 ally 3 lbs. There is a rise of May-fly, and the 

 favourite artificials are olive duns, red spinners, and 

 March browns. The style of fly fishing is either 

 wet or dry. Colonel Godwin-Austen preserves the 

 Tillingbourne as high as Chilworth, and his water 

 has been re-stocked at various times. The late 

 Mr. Andrews put some yearlings into the stream 

 after it had been poisoned years ago, and the ex- 

 periment proved very successful. The angler may 

 stay at either Shalford or Gomshall, both of which 

 places are on the South Eastern Railway. 



The Colne is a somewhat poor looking stream 

 above its junction with the much more attrac- 



The tive Ver. It rises not far from Hatfield 

 Colne. ^^(^ meets the Ver two miles or so 

 below Park Street. Thence, swelled by a brook 

 from Elstree, the Colne runs to Watford ; Rick- 

 mansworth, where it receives the Gade and 

 Chess (which are dealt with in the chapters 

 on Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire) ; Hare- 

 field; Denham; Uxbridge; and West Drayton. 

 Below West Drayton there are no trout ; and the 

 Colne, passing Colnbrook, joins the Thames a mile 

 from Wraysbury. The Colne, I am sorry to say, 

 has, like the Wandle and Mole, suffered much of late 

 years from sewage pollution ; but the prospects of 

 the angler now that the Thames Conservancy is 

 actively moving in the matter, are really beginning 

 to look a little brighter. The Colne from Rick- 

 mansworth to West Drayton has several very 

 pretty and celebrated places on or near its banks. 

 There is Moor Park, referred to elsewhere, and 

 Denham Court, where Dryden wrote his First 

 Georgic, and where Charles H. is supposed to have 



