258 SALMONIA. [NINTH DAY. 



whatever was moving or appeared alive on the surface 

 of the water ; so that this reptile feeds like a nobler 

 animal, the eagle, only on living prey.* 



POIET. You say trout are rare in Italy, yet on 

 Ash Wednesday, a great day for the consumption^ of 

 fish in Borne, I remember to have seen some large 

 trout, which, I was told, were from the Velino, 

 above the Falls of Terni. 



HAL. I once went almost to the source of this 

 river, above Eieti, in the hopes of catching trout, but 

 I was unsuccessful. I saw some taken by nets, but 

 the fish were too few, and the river too foul, from the 

 deposition of calcareous matter, to render it a good 

 stream for the angler. In this journey I saw some 

 trout in brooks in the Sabine country, that I dare 

 say might have been taken by the fly ; but they were 

 small, and like the brook trout of England. In these 

 streams, as well as in the Velino and other torrents, I 

 found the water-ouzel, which, as far as my knowledge 

 extends, is always a companion of the trout, and I 

 believe feeds much upon the same larvae of water-flies. 



[* In my work on the Ionian Islands, another kind of angling is 

 noticed as practised there, and that with the fly an aerial kind for 

 swallows. In spring, when these birds first arrive, and then crowd 

 about the lofty cliifs of the little island of Paxo, the natives, standing 

 or sitting on the dizzy margin, take them, when on the wing, with 

 the bait mentioned, attached to a fine hook and line, throwing it 

 into the air, very much in the same manner as in ordinary fly- 

 fishing. J. D.] 



