26 COLIN CLOUTS CALENDAR. 



V. 

 THE TROUT JUMP. 



POOR little May-flies on the pools of Venlake, you 

 have at best but a hard life of it ! Though your wings 

 are fairy-like and light as gauze, though the sunshine 

 plays upon your dancing bodies with opalescent hues, 

 though you spend your time merrily enough to all seem- 

 ing in flitting and flirting by the cool rivulet, yet is your 

 appointed span but twenty-four hours long, and even 

 for that short space your courtship and your maternity 

 is environed with manifold dangers and endless foes. 

 You pass your days between the Scylla of sunshine and 

 the Charybdis of cloudy skies. When the sun shone 

 yesterday, you were devoured in the midst of your love- 

 making by the gay swallows ; when the clouds cover the 

 heaven to-day, I see the trout are leaping to engulf 

 you as you try in vain to lay your eggs in peace and 

 quiet on the calm surface of the water. The fish can 

 see you quite enough against the background canopy of 

 cloud, and there is nothing they love better for their 

 morning meal than a good fat mother May-fly. 



I wonder very much what thoughts pass through the 

 heads of these jumping trout as they gaze up eagerly 

 towards the vast white sheet above them, just dappled 



