EPISODICAL 213 



where than the Enz trout, and it was a good five minutes 

 (and seemed like ten) before I could prove that the weight 

 of this one was one pound fifteen ounces. 



A BORROWED ROD. 



In early June the Valley of the Erlaubnitz is a dream of 

 heat. On either side of its fringing water meadows there 

 stand, either upon the level or stretching up the lower 

 slopes of the hills, larch poles in serried rows, evidences of 

 the heroic German endeavour to accomplish the impossible 

 — to assuage the unassuageable Wurstphalian thirst — 

 while higher up the slopes, and clustering close round the 

 picturesque oolitic limestone crags, no less serried pines — 

 planted by the same foreseeing and provident German 

 mind — made provision to cope with the almost equally 

 unassuageable national demand for toothpicks. But what- 

 ever their ultimate destination, the effect, alike of pine 

 and hop, is to protect and shelter the river valley, and to 

 conduce to an activity and a fulness of insect life for which 

 there is no parallel on any English river. Alders in this 

 season hum round the alder bushes in countless myriads. 

 Sedges of all sorts and sizes — many of them large and 

 juicy — flutter along the river banks from morn to dewy 

 eve, and long after into the dark, when the law has put 

 a stop to angling. Of stone flies there is copious variety. 

 May flies in their season are alike splendid in quantity and 

 quality, while the rises of upwinged duns are to be envied 

 in Hants and Herts. 



Duns and May fly come on at intervals, but there is 

 seldom a moment of the day or night when sedges of some 

 sort or another are not offering temptation to trout and 

 grayling, scuttering along the surface in the pursuit of 

 happiness, or dibbing thereon in the discharge of function. 

 So it happens that the trout of Erlaubnitz, though sus- 



