WINTER FLOWERS 25 



Tweed boatmen as to the 'right fly ' to ensure the 

 exclusion of coldly rational principles in fishing 

 that fair stream for many a day to come. 



To sum up, then, the conclusion to which this 

 speculation brings us : salmon which enter a river 

 before their ovaries are much developed do so 

 neither with epicurean nor immediately matrimonial 

 views. They are fish surfeited with sea diet ; their 

 tissues are glutted with fat ; they can eat no more. 

 So, to escape porpoises, seals, sea-lice, and other 

 pelagic plagues, they seek shelter in the rivers where 

 they were bred. 



IX 



How little like the rigours of last season has been 

 the winter of 1895-96 ! This day winter 

 January 20th the air is still and Flowers 

 warm ; the mist which hung so low all morning is 

 yielding slowly before the afternoon sun, which 

 makes the wet woodland ivy gleam like malachite, 

 and turns the fallen leaves of beech and oak to 

 glowing copper. Sheets of snowdrops make mimic 

 winter on the banks ; they showed their first blooms 

 before the New Year. Frilled aconites hold up 

 their little golden cups, and already there are a few 



