The Brook Trout's Rival 85 



that, like the deer, bear, quail, woodcock, and grouse, 

 brook trout are slowly but surely passing. There 

 never was a fish so gamy, elusive, and eccentric, so 

 beautiful and so hard to deceive and capture by 

 scientific methods as the native brook trout. No 

 orator has yet risen to fully sound its praises ; no poet to 

 sing its merits as they deserve ; no painter to produce 

 its varied hues. The brook trout was planted in the 

 crystal waters by the Creator 'when the morning 

 stars sang together* and fonlinalis was undisturbed, 

 save as some elk, deer, bear, panther, or wildcat 

 forded the shallows of his abode, or some Indian or 

 mink needed him for food. In this environment the 

 brook trout grew and thrived. Much warfare made 

 him shy and suspicious until he became crafty to 

 a degree. The brook trout successfully combated 

 man's inventive genius in the shape of agile rods, 

 artificial flies and other bait calculated to fool the 

 most wary, and automatic reels, landing nets, and 

 other paraphernalia designed to rob a game fish of ' life, 

 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' But it was not 

 until the tanner and acid factory despoiler turned 

 poisoned refuse into the streams and the dynamiter 

 came upon the scene and the sheltering trees were cut 

 away by the lumberman, letting in the sun and warm- 

 ing the water to a nauseous tepidity, that the brave 

 trout faltered, hesitated, and then quit the uneven 

 conquest. Carp and bass were planted in the streams 

 to further endanger the brook trout's existence. Next 

 the California trout and the German brown trout, who 

 prey upon the true brook trout's progeny, followed, 

 till finally, beaten, baffled, dismayed, poisoned, 

 routed, and overwhelmed by the superior numbers and 

 size of a cannibalistic race, he gradually began his 



