VORACITY OF TROUT. 21 



a stream as the Leader, in order to secure a few 

 ill-conditioned salmon in the end of the season. 

 Clean fish will never ascend so small a stream, and 

 it will afford encouragement to some idle vagabonds 

 to poach in winter. 



The trout is unquestionably a voracious feeder, 

 and when hungry is not at all particular as to 

 what it satisfies its appetite upon. Flies and 

 aquatic insects of all descriptions, minnows and 

 other small fish, worms, beetles, snails, and frogs, 

 are equally victims to its rapacity ; nor does it 

 feel any compunctions in devouring the smaller 

 members of its own species. We once, when 

 angling with the minnow in Leader Water, caught 

 a trout of five or six ounces in weight with the tail 

 of a fish protruding about an inch from its mouth, 

 on pulling out which we found it to be a trout in 

 a partially digested state, which, when its neigh- 

 bour swallowed it, must have weighed at least two 

 ounces. This did not prevent it from rising at 

 the minnow, but its mouth being so full it could 

 not get hold of it, and it was only after repeated 

 rises that it was caught by the outside of the 

 mouth. 



All this might lead to the supposition that trout 

 would be easily captured ; but this is a great error. 

 Whether it arises from any superior natural endow- 

 ments, or is merely the result of education, as they 

 are more fished for than any other fish, and may 

 from that cause be more wide-awake ; this much 



