THE ROUND OF THE SEASON 148 



The banks skirting the lower parts of these 

 breeding streams are often well wooded, and so 

 overgrown that the possible, but improbable, 

 netting poacher has no chance of wholesale success. 



The grayling seldom go farther up the becks than 

 a hundred yards from the mouth. If, as some 

 fishermen aver, these winter feeding fish play havoc 

 with the ova of trout their depredations are confined 

 to the Eden, where fewer trout spawn than in the 

 becks. 



In concluding this rambling chapter it may be 

 said that, when the corn harvest has been gathered 

 in, in late cropping Westmorland, and the stubble 

 and turnips are still being shot over for partridge, 

 grayling fishing begins. It is the time of the fall 

 of the leaf, beginning with the ash after the first 

 frosty night, and ending in late November with the 

 hard-leaved beech. 



Then the season is over, and nothing further re- 

 mains to be done but to foregather at night round 

 the old firesides, to crack over the great days that 

 have gone, and forecast hopefully those others still 

 to come. 



