14 THE FRESH-WATER TROUT. 



parr or fingerlings, minnows, loaches and sticklebacks, 

 along with the roe or ova of salmon; and I doubt not 

 even young birds and water-rats are occasionally made 

 prey of by hungry river-trout. Examine the stomach, 

 and you will generally find a large mass composed of 

 insect-remains in a partly digested state, and super- 

 added sometimes to these, the remnants of a parr, loach, 

 or minnow. The carp, the tench, the perch, are not 

 more ravenous or varied in their feeding than the com- 

 mon fresh-water trout. Even the pike itself, although 

 a fearless, vindictive, and rapacious fish, is less glut- 

 tonous in its habits, and in its tastes infinitely more 

 simple and congruous. 



What is it then, it may be asked, that renders the 

 trout difficult of capture ? Its greedy propensities, one 

 might imagine, would naturally allow little room to the 

 angler for the exercise of skill and judgment. But 

 experience has taught otherwise, and the simple reason 

 of this is, that with these propensities the trout unites 

 epicure habits, caprice in its hours and seasons of 

 feeding, cunning, shyness, and watchful distrust. As 

 an epicure, it battens one day upon surface or winged 

 food, and the next upon ground sustenance. Some- 

 times the minnow will attract it, sometimes the worm; 

 sometimes, turning from both with dislike or satiety, 

 it will amuse its palate with delicacies of the minutest 

 description, the larvae of water-insects or pellets of ova, 

 picked up with address and assiduity from among the 

 interstices of rocks and stones, from the foliage or roots 

 of water-plants, or while floating past it in the de- 

 scending current. And this caprice as to its food, 

 while it tests the skill and experience of the angler, is 

 assisted in doing so by the cunning and natural mistrust 

 of the fish; its quick, vigilant eye ; its keen, distinguish- 



