280 OTHEE FISH AND GAME 



same in ditch-water. Nevertheless, strange to say, the agricultural 

 stomach digests chub ; and if after having filled your creel, or 

 three creels (as you may too often), with them, you will distribute 

 them on your way home to all the old women you meet, you will 

 make many poor souls happy, after having saved the lives of many 

 trout." 



The tender regard for the lives of the trout and the 

 tastes of the old women exhibited in the last two 

 lines of the above extract are worthy of Izaak Wal- 

 ton at his best, following so closely as they do upon 

 the author's appetizing description of cooked chub- 

 wick, candle, needles, bristles, ditch-water and all ! 



Nuisance as they prove themselves to the angler 

 when rising to his trout flies, these Canadian ouitouche 

 are neither as cowardly in their fight nor as repulsive 

 upon the table as their congener from the compara- 

 tively still, warm water of English streams. The oui- 

 touche is a more athletic fish, and the rapid, cool water 

 of its Canadian home gives some small measure of 

 firmness and sweetness to its flesh. 



THE WHITEFISH 



Highly esteemed as an article of commerce, the 

 common whitefish of North American waters is not 

 much prized by anglers, and, in fact, is rarely taken 

 except in nets. Professor Goode remarks that none 

 of the American species are of any importance to the 

 angler, and of those that inhabit the great lakes,, this 

 is undoubtedly true. But the same fish in higher lati- 

 tudes, where the temperature of the water is found so 

 much lower, remains longer near the surface of the 

 lakes in which it is found. In the notes of Mr. A. P. 



