ROOK TROUT 



day's summer sun. He has been charged with nasti- 

 ness of appetite because small snakes are eaten by 

 him. Why not eat them V The Chinaman loves his 

 puppy pottage, the Mexican Indian his grasshopper 

 pudding, and the Southern negro his carrion buzzard 

 stew. The trout will not eat carrion food of any de- 

 scription, yet the French Creole of Louisiana is said 

 to hang his wild duck outside the kitchen walls un- 

 til the atmosphere is soaked with the fowl's decaying 

 odors, before he cooks and eats it. Again, I very 

 much doubt if a trout could be tempted to nibble at 

 a thread of boiled sauer-kraut or even a crumb of a 

 Welsh-rarebit, at Limburger cheese or a Spanish olla- 

 podrida. Delicacy of taste and appetite, per se, are 

 seldom, if ever, correlative, but both are strongly, and 

 often strangely, individualized in all creatures of this 

 world's habitat. 



The habits of the trout being born of the springs, 

 with an environment, the beauty and almost kaleido- 

 scopic condition of which, changing with every glint of 

 a sunbeam through the foliage, are, as has been noted, 

 in touch and quality with its habitat. He seeks the 

 purest portions of the home stream, loving the white- 

 capped aeration of the strong currents, and the mouths 

 of the little rill-like tributaries which not only bring 

 down food for his well-developed appetite, but a fresh 

 supply of oxygen for his arterial system. When- 

 ever he is found in a pool of quiet water, a long stretch 

 of which often exists in large trout-streams, he is less 



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