THE WEATHER 163 



There is a popular impression that a grey day is 

 favourable to the prospects of the angler. I do not 

 doubt it, but the description is inadequate ; it is too 

 vague and indefinite to enable us to recognise the par- 

 ticular variety of grey day enshrined in the belief I 

 remember one such day which fully justified the popular 

 faith. The temperature was high ; there was not a 

 breath of wind stirring; the air was close and muggy — 

 steamy as that of a laundry — and a thin rain dripped 

 slowly from a sky monotonously drab. I was not 

 fishing, but curiosity prompted me to visit the water. 

 I stood on the bank with fingers itching to grasp a rod, 

 and watched the fish. They were rising in numbers, 

 but they, too, seemed to feel the enervating influence of 

 the day, and their movements were languid and slow. 

 They rose quietly and leisurely, and in taking the fly 

 scarcely broke the surface of the water. But what they 

 lacked in haste they made up in perseverance, for they 

 continued to feed with the same calm deliberation during 

 all the time I kept them under observation. 



That is one type of grey day, but there are others, 

 and others less likely to promote the fortunes of the 

 angler. When dark, and ragged, and rain-laden clouds 

 drive low across the sky, and a hard, cold wind is 

 sweeping in fitful gusts along the water, the trout ob- 



