2 SALMON AND TROUT. 



creel, and, for that matter, his pockets and his wading boots, 

 with the unsuspecting fario^ which came up gaily to his flies, 

 three or four at a time, in blissful ignorance and apparently 

 undiminished numbers. Such spots, however, are becoming 

 rarer year by year. Even the most sequestered waters are now 

 sought after, and generally found out, by the indefatigable 

 tourist or the lessees of the sporting rights ; and the inhabitants 

 of such waters, however unwilling to be taught, are receiving 

 the benefits of a sort of * compulsory education ' that is gra- 

 dually opening their eyes to several little things going on in 

 the wicked world around, with which it is to their advantage to 

 be acquainted. 



There are, of course, and probably always will be, degrees 

 of advancement in 'trout knowledge.' The streams of Scotland 

 and Ireland can never, in our time at least, be fished to the 

 same extent as those of England, and especially of our southern 

 counties. And it is very fortunate that it should be so, for 

 many a man whose trout-fishing experience has been attained 

 principally amongst the Scotch and Irish lakes and rivers, 

 and who, not unnaturally, perhaps, considers himself a highly 

 artistic performer, would be literally ' nowhere ' if suddenly 

 transferred with the same tackle and mode of fishing to the 

 banks of the Itchen, the Test, or the Driffield Beck. Instead 

 of finding comparatively few trout and those under fed, and 

 predisposed to at least regard his lure with a friendly eye, he 

 would see a water literally teeming with pampered and, there- 

 fore, highly fastidious, fish, whom his first appearance on the 

 bank sent flying in a dozen different directions, and who, when 

 his saturated nondescript did happen to pass over their noses, 

 moved not a responsive muscle, and by their attitude conveyed 

 the general idea of what Lord Randolph Churchill would call 

 ineradicable superciliousness. . . . 



But these are the products of ' centuries of civilisation,' and 

 the ultimate outcome of the theory of the survival of the fittest. 



In regard to salmon as well as trout the principle of the 

 'higher education' also holds good, although not quite in the 



