REARING 205 



the monasteries, properly kept up and cultivated and 

 were made to produce well-tasting fish during the 

 seasons of fasting. 



The Weston moat has once again become ' a thing 

 of beauty,' and, as I hope, 'a joy for ever.' At any 

 rate it produces annually a rich harvest of fat two- 

 year-old trout, whose gambols on a summer evening 

 are certainly more enlivening than the torpid move- 

 ments of a carp, which though extolled by Isaac 

 Walton as ' the queen of rivers, a stately, a good, and 

 a very subtil fish,' l has so far fallen from her high 

 estate that, according to an eminent writer of modern 

 times, she may often 'be seen lying among the weeds 

 at the surface of the water at which she lazily sucks, 

 making a very distinct noise which has been likened 

 to that produced by a pig.'- 



I have said that a set of trout-ponds should be 

 one of the attractive features of your place, but I will 

 give you a word of warning, and being on dangerous 

 ground, I will screen myself behind high authority. 



' If the reader must have a pair of swans to look 

 pretty, let him get a skilful taxidermist to stuff him 

 .1 pair as life-like as possible ; he may even, to 

 render the illusion more real, put some clockwork 



