THE BROOK TROUT. 



Salmo Fontinalis. 



THIS merry month of May is the month of all others 

 dear prescriptively to the trout-fisher. In England, it has 

 been for centuries admitted the sweetest and the fairest 

 month of spring ; the month " where sweets compacted 

 lie, the union of the earth and sky." Poets have sung 

 it, and traditions hallowed it ; and, from the old day, 

 when the hoary druids culled with their golden hooks 

 the sacred mistletoe, and the young maidens were astir 

 before the morning star, to gather maydew in the 

 flowery meadows, even to this hard, real, unideal nine- 

 teenth century, the month of May has a character of its 

 own, not with young lovers only, but w r ith the world in 

 general, different from that of any other of the twelve 

 changeful cycles, and differently hailed of men. 



In England, as I have said, it is the sweetest, with us 



in America it is the first, I had almost said the only 



month of spring. For, in our western hemisphere, the 



winter hangs so heavily, and lingers so late into the 



6* 



