76 A BIRD COLLECTOR'S MEDLEY. 



weight to two pounds eight ounces within the week. Verily the licence allowed 

 to anglers is more illimitable than that of poets ! 



Good fishing is always to be had from Dennabridge onwards to the Dart- 

 meet, where the beauty of the scenery is proverbial. Besides trout and 

 samlet, fair-sized peel are frequently captured in the evening, and another 

 well-known denizen of the stream is the otter. I had the good fortune to 

 watch one sporting for some time amidst the rapids below Wistman's Wood. 

 There are not many species of the smaller birds to be met with, though Larks, 

 Pipits, and Wheatears abound, and the Dipper "flaunts his white waistcoat" 

 beside nearly all the swift-running streams. According to Morris, most of 

 the rare Hawks have been secured in the neighbourhood, and the Buzzard is 

 said to breed there still, but though Kestrels were quite common we our- 

 selves saw none of the larger species. 



On Sunday morning it is possible to obtain admission to the Convict 

 Chapel, where about seven hundred prisoners assemble, and the effect of the 

 men's voices in the hymns is most impressive. The hills of Dartmoor have 

 ere now echoed back other shots than those of the sportsman, and time was when 

 three of these unfortunates were shot in one morning while trying to escape. 

 Of another it is told that, having eloped during an opportune mist, he spent 

 the night in running before the wind, which shifted steadily, and landed him 

 at daybreak within four hundred yards of the prison. 



The subjoined Latin elegy, culled from the golden treasury of a cottage 

 visitors' book, gives a not altogether untrue summary of the sporting capa- 

 bilities of the neighbourhood. Can we suppose that the use of the perfect 

 genuit in the eighth line suggests the ill-natured cynicism of some disgusted 

 angler, who had toiled in vain for anything larger than a six-inch fish, the 

 smallest size at which they can legally be transferred to the creel ? If so, we 

 think others may be found to sympathize, though perhaps unjustly, with his 

 plaint. In any case, we can appreciate the monotonous jingle of the closing 

 line, in which the poet does justice to the vapours characteristic of the locality, 

 for Dartmoor is pre-eminently the land of fogs. Below we give the lines for 

 what they are worth. 



Career ubi triplex nebulosis montibus exstat, 



Copia venandi est, quaerite si quis amat. 

 Hie si forte juvat seolopaeem figere telis 



dis horrenda palus Foxtoriensis adest, 

 Sed cave ne seolopax fallat te gurgite eaptum 



dum miser obseoenos fundis ab ore modos. 

 Squamigeram calatho si cura est eogere praedam, 



ingentes genuit Dartia Salmonidas. 

 Haee tibi contingent interdum, numine fausto, 



omnibus omnitegens tempus in omne vapor. 



