CLEAR WATERS 



Kennet, the Salisbury Avon, and the Wylie, together 

 with some tributaries and little brooks less known 

 to fame. Like the Hampshire rivers these are nowa- 

 days, I think, mainly fished by Londoners and aliens 

 with well-lined pockets. The country parson, the 

 doctor, the schoolmaster, the rural tradesman, the 

 village blacksmith has no interest, not even a detached 

 one, in trout, and it is altogether another country in 

 this respect from North and West Britain. The man 

 who cuts the weeds or attends to the hatches in the 

 water meadows and, for still more obvious reasons, the 

 miller, are on speaking terms with the fish, but have 

 no scientific interest in a craft that neither they nor 

 their belongings have ever had anything to do with. 

 There are here no aboriginal fly-casters or fly-tiers, or 

 deadly men with a running worm. In spite of its 

 beautiful streams Wiltshire might almost be Norfolk 

 or Suffolk so far as the local atmosphere is concerned. 

 These things are, and always were, for * the gentles,' 

 and mainly nowadays gentles from London and other 

 foreign parts well, perhaps not altogether on the 

 higher parts of the streams. Local interest still lingers 

 about the less coveted reaches : the parson, the 

 doctor, a big farmer or two, or even a leading trades- 

 man, reserve their privileges, cultivate the art of the 

 dry fly, talk fishing betimes in the market-place, and 

 give a little local flavour to the business. 



I hardly know what happened to these Wiltshire 

 chalk streams generally before the introduction of the 

 dry-fly method, though I was reared on one. But I 

 do know, as may have been gathered from the first 

 chapter, that the fish had no sort of objection to a 



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