A Question of Heredity 137 



fold wiles of the angler. Does the excessive 

 cunning of a knowing old trout in Test, 

 Itchen, Derbyshire Wye, or Kennet die 

 with him, or is it transmitted to future 

 generations of trouts to keep light the creel 

 and heavy the heart of the angler yet un- 

 born ? This is a question which no scientific 

 man seems so far to have laid himself out 

 to investigate ; and, indeed, it may be 

 doubted whether he could do so with a 

 chance of arriving at the truth, unless a 

 keen and observant angler himself, or else 

 aided in his researches by a chalk-stream 

 fisherman. The habits of that shyest of fish, 

 the trout, can only be thoroughly understood 

 by long and close observation on the banks 

 of a clear and slow-flowing stream, and 

 even then to get a really good idea of the 

 fish's cleverness and sense of danger one must 

 be a keen angler oneself. 



That the trout of our chalk streams are 

 much more diflScult to impose upon with an 

 artificial fly than of yore really cannot be 

 questioned. There are laudatores temporis 



