250 THE TROUT 



have changed since then in quality as well as in 

 colour? Yet though we believe before all in the 

 trout from the Scottish and Irish lochs and rivers, we 

 are bound to say that some of the Southern streams 

 are scarcely, if at all, behind them. The Kennet is 

 good, where the fish are more gracefully shaped and 

 more brilliantly speckled as you approach the upland 

 sources ; the Test is still better, where in water 

 crystal clear you lure the wary quarry with gossamer 

 gut, and stalk him from afar on bended knee, care- 

 ful of the faintest fall of your shadow. There the 

 transparent water runs over glistening chalk, and you 

 might almost read the superscription on a three- 

 penny-bit at two fathoms depth. But the trout 

 of some Hertfordshire streams perhaps take pre- 

 cedence ; from the Colne, where Sir Humphry 

 Davy's pupil caught the phenomenal fish which his 

 host sent as a present to His Royal Highness the 

 Duke of Sussex ; and, above all, from the oddly 

 named and less known Mimram, which flows through 

 Lord Cowper's preserves of I'anshanger. 



Probably among all the inland trout of these 

 islands, from the bron/.e-backed denizens of the 

 northern Highland lochs to the bright-sided beauties 

 of the South, radiant with glowing crimson or golden 

 spots, those of I.ochlcven are at once the richest and 



