MAY. 119 



this world, not afraid, though their companions 

 perish in their sight." Worms, minnows, boiled 

 horse-beans, cadis, and oakworm, (cynips) and 

 gentles, are his baits. The chub will this month 

 take flies, snails, beetles with the legs off, and 

 the black bee, which builds in clay walls. His 

 haunts are streams shaded with trees. The 

 tencli is well taken this month, with a red 

 worm, a lob-worm, well scoured gentle, or a 

 green caterpillar shook from a tree. But the 

 pride of May angling is the trout ; which, how- 

 ever, is not perfectly prime till next month. 

 Cloudy weather, a little windy, especially from 

 the South, is in high favour with the trouter, 

 because the streams which this beautiful fish 

 inhabit are usually not deep, and very clear, 

 thereby exposing the angler entirely to his 

 quick eye. The finest old trouts, however, are 

 taken in the night with a worm, being too shy 

 to come out of their holes, or to rise in the day : 

 they are often taken by torch-light in Hamp- 

 shire, as salmon are in Scotland, striking them 

 down with a spear. 



Flies. The oak-fly to be found from the be- 

 ginning of this month till the end of August? 

 on the bole of an oak or ash, always standing 

 head downwards : the hawthorn-fly, a small, 

 black fly: the Turkey-fly, red and yellow: al- 

 der-fly, and the great hackle. These are chiefly 

 stone-flies, or phryganeae. 



