AND HOW I HAVE CAUGHT MY FISH 137 



his son and others, watched until midnight, but to 

 no purpose. It was then determined that the son 

 should crawl to the ditch and see if there really 

 was a net. Had I faltered when I caught sight 

 of it, or had I not returned to my fishing in an 

 ordinary manner, the owners of the net would have 

 removed it, and I should have been told I had 

 been mistaken, as I have been told more than 

 once before. The watching continued for some 

 two hours longer, and, as those watched for did 

 not put in an appearance, the net was taken 

 away. 



It has sometimes appeared to me to be the 

 primary and most important duty of a preserva- 

 tion society to disprove the correctness of informa- 

 tion supplied to them. This was once beautifully 

 and most conclusively done for me on the Thames, 

 but I had the consolation of reading, a few weeks 

 afterwards, that the men had been captured and 

 their nets destroyed. This little eccentricity would 

 be a poor excuse for not subscribing to them. We 

 must never forget that the work of preservation 

 is, to a great extent, done by men whose time is 

 valuable, without fee or reward, so we must over- 

 look any little failing, and give our guineas un- 

 grudgingly. 



Before leaving Ardara I must tell of a nice 

 day's sport we had in Lough Nalughraman, about 

 five miles from Ardara. 



It is very high up on Maum Mountain, where 



