THE COMMON BROWN TROUT. 235 



to the appendix to Mr. Francis Francis' "Fish Culture" (Routledge), 

 in which he describes the experiments of a lady with these larvae and 

 coloured beads, and to the chapter on "The Etymology of Bait" in 

 "Fishing Gossip " (A. and C. Black, Edinburgh). Indeed, I recommend 

 a careful study of these creatures to the young angler as being likely to 

 form a subject of great usefulness in his education. 



When the time has come for the caddis or larva to assume the pupa 

 state, it anchors itself to the bottom, and closes up the mouth of the 

 case with a strong network of silk, through which it breathes. After 

 passing a certain time in this state the pupa cuts its way through, 

 leaves its case, throws off its filmy covering, and becomes a fly. 



Of the black alder fly, the larva of which is the common caddis of 

 the Thames, the late Canon Kingsley pronounced the following eloquent 

 rhapsody : 



" O thou beloved member of the brute creation ! songs have been 

 written in praise of thee, statues would ere now have been erected to 

 thee, had that hunchback and flabby wings of thine been ' susceptible 

 of artistic treatment.' But ugly thou art in the eyes of the uninitiated 

 vulgar ; a little stumpy old maid, toddling about the world in a black 

 bonnet and a brown cloak, laughed at by naughty boys, but doing good 

 wherever thou comest, and leaving sweet memories behind thee, so 

 sweet that the trout will rise at the ghost or sham of thee, for pure love 

 of thy past kindnesses to them months after thou hast departed from this 

 sublunary sphere. What hours of bliss do I not owe to thee ! How 

 have I seen in the rich meads of Wey, after picking out wretched 

 quarter-pounders all the morning on March brown and wretched hackle, 

 the great trout rush from every hover to welcome thy first appearance 

 among the sedges and buttercups ! How often, late on in August, on 

 Thames, on Test, on Loddenheads, have I seen the three and four pound 

 fish prefer thy dead image to any live reality ! Have I not seen poor 

 old Si Wilder, king of Thames fishermen (now gone home to his rest), 

 shaking his huge sides with delight over thy mighty deeds, as his 14in. 

 whiskers fluttered in the breeze like the horse-tailed standard of some 

 great bashaw, while crystal Thames murmured over the white flints on 

 Monkey Island shallow, and the soft breeze sighed in the colossal poplar 

 spires, and the great trout rose and rose and would not cease at thee, my 

 alder fly ? Have I not seen, after a day on which the earth below was 

 iron and the heavens above as brass, as the three-pounders would have 

 thee, and thee alone, in the purple August dust, old Moody 'a red face 

 grow redder with excitement, half proud at having advised me to ' put 

 on' thee, half fearful lest we should catch all my lady's pet trout in 

 one evening ? Beloved alder fly ! would that I could give thee a soul 



