98 SOUTH COUNTRY TROUT STREAMS 



The Test, formerly known as the Anton, is the undis- 

 puted and undisputable queen of our south country 

 _ trout streams. If Hampshire could boast 



The Test 



the Test alone, it would stand high on the 

 list of counties from the angler's point of view. 

 The Test is a pure chalk stream. It flows through 

 a country, the subsoil of which is invariably chalk, 

 the surface soil being also in many places very 

 calcareous.! Happily no towns of any size, save 

 Southampton, are situated on or very near its 

 banks, and it has therefore escaped considerable 

 pollution. Nor have water companies made as yet 

 their disastrous influence felt upon its pure springs. 

 It flows, a limpid stream, abounding with splendid 

 trout, and in some places with grayling of great 

 size, through a land, indeed, of milk and honey in 

 the literal sense ; through water meadows, which in 

 the darkest days of agriculture have often seemed to 

 the distressed farmer and landed proprietor the sole 

 redeeming feature of an all but ruinous business ; 

 and by villages and hamlets, the quiet beauty of 

 whose surroundings the patriotic Hampshire angler 

 will on the whole prefer to anything the mountain 

 streams of Wales or Scotland have to show. 



1 So chalky are several districts on the upper Test that 

 the villagers' kettles get encrusted after a while with a thick 

 white powder. Though the clearness and the purity of the 

 chalk streams are proverbial, it seems from the reports of 

 the Rivers Pollution Commissioners that some of the waters 

 flowing over the granite and non-calcareous rocks in Corn- 

 wall and Devonshire are the freest of all from solids. 

 Analysis of the Earme water, for instance, made a quarter 

 of a century ago, showed a total of only 2*48 solids, and of 

 the South Teign a total of only 2'53. But these rivers 

 are more subject to floods than those cutting through and 

 running over the chalk. 



