At Home with Wild Nature 



to swim to it across the pool the chances are you would 

 never be able to scramble up its steep, slippery side, 

 and might be sucked to destruction by the volume of 

 water dragging for ever downwards, towards the hole in 

 the lower rim. 



A few yards overhead there is a small inaccessible 

 crevice hi the face of the limestone cliff. In this the 

 beautiful grey wagtail, with its canary yellow breast and 

 long black tail, has bred from time immemorial. 



Fifty yards higher up the gorge is spanned by an old 

 wooden footbridge in the very last stages of decrepitude. 

 Its timbers are so deeply decayed that it would hardly 

 be safe for two people to cross at the same time, lest it 

 should collapse and precipitate them headlong into the 

 unlighted depths of the narrow rock-pool beneath. 



A little way below the funnel hole the river meanders 

 over a shingle bank and tumbles into another deep pool 

 crowded with trout of all ages and sizes. In droughty 

 weather you can see them through the six or seven feet 

 of limpid water all lying at rest, like a regiment of 

 soldiers, every head pointing up-stream. In these con- 

 gregations the small fish are compelled to keep an ever- 

 wary eye on the large ones, because old trout have a 

 disagreeable habit of turning cannibal. I have seen, 

 nay, caught, in the days of my youth, when tickling was 

 not regarded as poaching and trout far more plentiful 

 than in these by-law-bound times, a fish a foot and a 

 half long with another in its mouth so large it could not 

 be swallowed, and had to be digested piecemeal. A 

 hungry, unsophisticated trout will rise at anything he 



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