FRANKLY IRRELEVANT 123 



Hampshire flies, were charging and careering wildly 

 about their pasture, heels half the time in air. 



Just a cast above the bottom boundary was a 

 run which promised a moving fish when the trout 

 began to move, and half an hour's wait in these 

 exquisite meadows was time well spent, if only 

 in observing the splendid profusion of life in this 

 wonderful valley. The tender bloom of the 

 meadowsweet was at its most perfect, great 

 wild purple orchids put up among the boggy 

 tussocks, while the lush richness of the water-side 

 herbage baffled description. From some meadow 

 near came the " crek, crek " of the landrail — less 

 common, alas ! than of old — the note of the 

 snipe, the wailing cry of the pewit, the " coo " of 

 the turtle-dove, were punctuated with the queru- 

 lous gutturals of the moorhen, shyly under cover 

 in the sedges. Presently a small pale olive rose 

 from the surface and came drifting down the 

 wind, then another and another, escaping their 

 water-enemies below only, too often, to be snapped 

 up by the screeching swifts that found them out too 

 soon. Then, in the very neck of the run, a fish put 

 up, and the serious business of the evening began. 



The fly on the cast was a Tup's Indispensable, 

 then the latest invention of an ingenious West- 

 Country angler, and, when the red spinner is up, a 

 very killing fly, but the fish, continuing to feed, 

 would none of him. Nor was the Red Quill to his 

 liking, but the first cast of a Ginger Quill on No. 00, 



16 — 2 



