8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



a single stroke of her powerful beak, transfix a 

 frog, or swallow an eel in spite of his writhings 

 and struggles, and not unfrequently, to my 

 infinite delight, kill, and carry off to her distant 

 nest, those most hated and destructive foes to 

 our race, our cousins the yellow and bull trout. 

 Yes ! our own blood relations are our direst 

 foes, and I have witnessed the destruction, by 

 a hungry old kelt, of fifty of his own progeny 

 for breakfast. 



" Artificially bred samlets, confined in large 

 ponds, and daily stuffed with food, escape most 

 of these perils ; but, I think, the system is 

 carried too far. Protected from all danger, the 

 young fry are ignorant of its appearance, and 

 they lose the natural instinct which would 

 otherwise prompt them to avoid it. They are 

 like home-bred boys, who, having been brought 

 up under the surveillance of parents and tutors, 

 only sent forth into the world at an age when 

 other lads, less carefully attended, are fully 

 capable of taking care of themselves, become 

 the easy prey to the sharks and cormorants, 

 and cold blooded, slimy eels, in the shape of 

 usurers and others, whose vocation it is to prey 

 upon them. The grand loss to my race is in 



