IRISH LOACH-TROLLING. 19 



cyphers. The pounds avoirdupois which they are 

 found to weigh after they attain a respectable size, 

 may possibly give a fair approximation to their re- 

 spective ages. Sooner or later, however, the day of 

 decline arrives. Fly-fishing or trolling, I have hooked 

 during the season occasional specimens of a long, 

 tapering, huge-headed animal ; all skin, bone, and 

 fins, like a flying-fish, but languid in his move- 

 ments, voracious in his appetites, and seemingly in- 

 different to his fate. Shall the melancholy fact be 

 recorded ? it is our once gallant friend ferox, who 

 could in better days run out forty yards of line in a 

 breath, spring from the lowest depths of his domain 

 above the surface with fly or loach in Ms mouth, and 

 contemptuously turn up his nose half-a-dozen of 

 times at net or gaff ; but now, alas ! wabbling about 

 like a miserable snig in his dotage and decrepitude. 

 And as if this were not sufficient humiliation for the 

 pride and paragon of inland waters, the rustic fishers, 

 no more respectful of his character than the ichthyo- 

 logists, have combined to call him in this state a 

 " piper." Date obolum Belisario gently remove the 

 hook from his aged jaws ; return him safely to his 

 native element, and crown the deed of charity by 

 sending after him as many loaches as you can spare. 

 "When you next visit the lake you will probably 

 witness his obsequies performed and his bones picked 

 by a merciless group of gulls and scarecrows, scream- 



