304 SALMON AND TROUT. 



He was turned loose again after a hasty weighing ; but he had 

 seen his best days, and in the following season was finally 

 drawn out a mere living skeleton. Under the circumstances 

 we can hardly ' wonder a great trout should decline.' The 

 wonder lay in the dimensions he actually attained. 



In another case I stocked with tiny trout, caught with the 

 hand from the very smallest of Kentish brooks, a little pool of 

 about twelve yards by five, formed merely for picturesque effect 

 in the beautiful grounds of ' The Hollands,' near Tunbridge 

 Wells. Here there was a sort of feeder, but so small that an 

 ordinary pitcher might during nine months of the year have 

 received all that flowed in the course of a minute from the 

 1 little Naiad's impoverished urn.' In the third year afterwards 

 I tried the pond thus fed with extemporised tackle a hazel 

 stick, a line of Irish thread, and a glass minnow which happened 

 to be travelling in my portmanteau. In less than half an hour 

 I took two trout weighing i| Ib. each ; both well fed, handsome 

 fish, firm and pink-fleshed. 



I mention these facts because I would fain see trout more 

 generally introduced into ornamental waters. For instance, I 

 feel assured that the sheet of water in Battersea Park, if judi- 

 ciously stocked with small fish from a small stream, would carry 

 a good head of trout, whose movements would divert many a 

 toiling artisan, unused to any nobler fish than a half-grown 

 rudd. There are many of our canals in which trout might thrive. 

 Within a few fields of the Driffield Beck a notable example 

 may be seen in a canal connecting the town of Driffield with 

 the Humber. Oddly enough, the natives always call it ' the 

 River.' 



Some forty-five years ago, in very bad fishing weather, I 

 wanted to carry home to Hull an extra lot of fish, and thought 

 I would try the river head at an hour when, according to my ex- 

 perience, brook trout are hardly awake. I took a fair stock of 

 minnows with me, and made my first cast in the morning twi- 

 light, soon after four o'clock. Between that hour and seven I got 

 three and a half brace of trout, averaging more than a pound and 



