THE ANGLER'S SOUVENIR. 



135 



golden brown. The shield-fern vies with the lady- 

 ferns in luxuriance, but not in beauty, and the com- 

 mon bracken now gives place to his nobler congeners. 

 Then, with a sudden transition from the wildness 

 and the tropical hixuriance of the ferns, we come 

 upon a meadowy interspace, margined with oaks, 

 and flecked with sunshine and shadow, sleeping 

 quietly in a sunny haze and silence. Across this 

 there runs a tiny tributary stream, scarce six inches 

 wide in parts, but every few yards falling over a 

 stone into a little pool a pool not much larger and 

 deeper than a good-sized saucepan. Yet watch. 

 We drop our worm on the top of a puny waterfall, 

 and it is carried souse into the pool below, a troutlet 

 darts at it from under the bank, and is hooked. 

 Each pool seems to hold just one trout, about six 

 inches long, and if one is caught its place is supplied 

 a day or two afterwards. In the space of twenty 

 yards we catch four small trout in this manner, and 

 each in its own little pool, where hitherto he was 

 monarch of all he surveyed. 



Beyond the glade the ravine becomes still nar- 

 rower, the rocks become barer, but are painted with 

 stripes of brilliant green, where runlets of water 

 trickle over cushiony moss. The waterfalls increase 

 in height and grandeur, and the water is always 

 white with foam and sparkling with air-bells, each 

 of which seems to hold captive a bit of sunbeam. 

 We become sensible of a louder roar, and then we 

 come to the end of the Linn, and its crowning 



