THE WEATHER 161 



added nothing to our knowledge since Venator was 

 informed that he who considers the subject too curiously 

 "shall be a little superstitious." 



The atmospheric causes to which we ascribe the 

 seemingly erratic behaviour of the trout are, with our 

 information, past finding out. Not until some one with 

 a Darwin's faculty for generalization has furnished 

 us with new facts and co-ordinated those we now 

 possess, shall we have an explanation of his caprices. 

 He has taught us that in angling, more than in any- 

 thing else, it is the unexpected that happens, and the 

 surprises with which he provides us follow each other 

 so frequently that they soon cease to surprise. His 

 conduct is altogether incalculable. On one day we 

 find him accepting the fly with delightful alacrity, and 

 on the next, under what are, to us, precisely similar 

 conditions, he is not to be charmed by the most fascin- 

 ating fly in our possession. The weather which, to- 

 day, seems to favour the interests of the angler, he 

 finds, to-morrow, arrayed on the side of his quarry. I 

 have, on a day of alternate sunshine and shower, taken 

 fish only while the rain continued falling ; and I have, 

 on the contrary, seen them put down at once by an 

 approaching cloud, to reappear when the sun was again 

 on the water. 



