MARCH 57 



elsewhere it is by some persons taken 

 for granted that, after many decades of 

 free fishing, trout are much fewer than 

 they once were. Noticing that large fish 

 in the basket are rarer and rarer, certain 

 students of the subject have inferred 

 that the stocks have been becoming 

 smaller, and have predicted that the 

 species will ere long be extinct. That 

 belief is to a large extent mistaken. 

 Those who entertain it leave out of 

 account the evidence that would meet 

 them if they looked carefully into the 

 streams. Except in places where pollu- 

 tion is serious or pike are plentiful, 

 the rivers hold, if not quite so many 

 trout as they held fifty years ago, as 

 many as there is need for. The real 

 trouble, as was indicated in our last 

 chapter, is that the average size of the 

 fish is less than it used to be. Of this 

 there can be no doubt at all. Three- 

 pounders and four-pounders were once 

 not uncommon in many a water where 

 two-pounders are now so scarce that their 



