MAY 105 



What abundant life there is in this meadow beside 

 the lucid Itchen ! Most living things in the water and 

 on the land are making honeymoon; only the trout, 

 cold-blooded creatures, having transacted matrimony 

 during the long winter nights, are free to cruise about 

 with no more sentimental aim than to fill their 

 stomachs ! Dabchicks, coots, water-hens, wild-ducks, 

 and water-rats are intent on far more tender cares. A 

 pair of great spotted woodpeckers are enlarging the 

 premises they occupied last year in the dead branch of 

 a poplar. On the trellised wall of the fishing-cottage a 

 pair of chaffinches are putting the finishing touches to 

 their new nest, a masterpiece of art tapestry. It is 

 within a few feet of the old one, which, after the young 

 brood fledged out of it last June, a pair of spotted fly- 

 catchers faked up into a receptacle for their eggs. 

 These, being among the latest of our summer migrants 

 to arrive, have not much time to spend on the niceties 

 of architecture, and often are content to use second- 

 hand furniture. 



XLIV 



This is a favourable time for noosing basking pike 

 out of the backwaters of our trout-stream, and the 

 miller is a great adept at this game. It is p^ ^^ 

 really a very delicate art, especially when the Black Bass 

 fish are small. Eighteen baby jack taken with fine 

 wire one morning near Itchen Abbas weighed no more 

 than nineteen ounces. I have never seen a trout 



