314 SALMON AND TROUT. 



stream. One * especially looks as if it would be * catawampously 

 chawed up ' by any trout of good taste. The shell is very frail, 

 with a wide transparent lip ; and in warm weather you may see 

 them by hundreds floating over the surface of a weedy pool 

 with this lip upwards, surmounted and overlapped by a tempt- 

 ing expanse of soft, fat body, most inviting to any hungry fish. 

 They are, it is true, chiefly found in still pools, but would 

 thrive in the slow sedgy reaches and quiet backwaters of large 

 streams. 

 - This is not a mere conjecture of my own. A valued friend, 

 the late Mr. Morton AUport, of Hobart Town, to whose judg- 

 ment and energy Tasmanian pisciculture owed much of its 

 success, imported a number of these shell fish soon after the 

 introduction of English Sal/tionidce into the island, and watched 

 their multiplication with great interest. He found that they 

 would thrive in quiet streams, and showed them to me cluster- 

 ing round a bed of the English water lily. They were, in his 

 opinion, excellent food for both trout and perch. 



I have yet one more form of trout diet to mention which 

 may surprise many of my readers. I speak of a certain very 

 small leech, never, I believe, found in rivers, but abundant in 

 sundry lochs. I must confess myself utterly ignorant of the 

 laws which determine the habitat of these delicate crawlers, but 

 I have found trout literally gorged with them who were far 

 above the common standard in colour and flavour ; and were 

 I about to establish a normal training school for SalmonidcB^ I 

 would stock my lake or reservoir with a few hundred of these 

 hirudines., obtained, e.g. from Llyn Manwd, near Festiniog. 



I have gone into these details from a conviction that the 

 trout fishing of the future must turn in great measure on the 

 question of food, and that any and every means should be tried 

 to increase the supply. In dry seasons, the upper waters of 

 our streams require especial looking to, when they are too much 

 shrunk to attract the fly fisher. It is occasionally necessary to 

 move large numbers of the fish down the stream as its sources 



1 Palustrist 



