ON RAPID STREAMS. 17 



or grub, now on another, still labouring and still 

 feeding, there is no rest for them: but a few 

 there are even in these rapid streams who, mature 

 in years and excessive in timidity, partake some- 

 what of the habits of those trout inhabiting the 

 larger and slower stream, and find out what few 

 quiet holes and hovers the stream may afford, and 

 there enjoying comparative immunity from the 

 necessity of constant toil, please themselves as to 

 their time of feeding, and carry their own power 

 of selection even to the kind of food they will eat, 

 rejecting such as may not be quite agreeable, de- 

 fying at the same time their smaller brethren to 

 come within their domains or attempt to wrestle 

 and contest with them for the dainty morsel their 

 stomach desires : but those in ,the North Devon 

 streams are few, most lamentably few ; so many 

 enemies there conspire together for the illegal and 

 unfair destruction of the trout, that the number of 

 those permitted to survive many summers is small, 

 most small indeed. Oh ! that the gentlemen of 

 North Devon would amalgamate in heart and 

 action, and determine to preserve the trout they 

 as Devonians ought most justly to be proud 

 of, not limiting their field of operations to some 

 few miles of water, but fencing their main and 

 tributary streams, the nursery and the field from 

 all intrusion of poachers, or those who would in 

 any unsportsmanlike manner destroy a trout 

 truly their reward would be great ; in no long 

 time the North of Devon might boast not only of 

 its natural beauties in outline and detail of hill 



c 



