44 By Stream and Sea. 



them head to stream. From any point of view along the 

 bank the buildings of the Hospital of St. Cross look pic- 

 turesque. An angler appears on the other bank persevering 

 in spite of difficulties, and he, without knowing it, throws 

 straight across to the trout which we have been criticizing. 

 The fly falls at first too far below him, for it is a long cast. 

 The trout could scarcely have seen the flash of the footline 

 on the water, yet at the instant of its fall he makes an 

 uneasy movement with his tail. A second attempt brings 

 the Hammond's Favourite lightly' upon the precise ripple 

 that would float it over the head of the trout, but he has 

 disappeared like a stroke of lightning. In all England you 

 shall not find a river requiring so much delicacy of manipu- 

 lation as the Itchen. Wherefore let clumsy fly-fishers take 

 heed. 



In the upper waters grayling have been introduced with 

 great success, and there are bright prospects of improve- 

 ment in the breed of this handsome and sport-giving winter 

 fish. There are nothing like the number of grayling there 

 were in the Itchen twenty years ago, when thirty-three brace 

 were taken in a day by one rod near Twyford, the village 

 where Pope was partly educated. The grayling, however, 

 lost their character, and were killed in season and out of 

 season. When it was discovered that they far outnumbered 

 the trout and worried their speckled cousins at the spawn- 

 ing beds ; when it was darkly hinted that they devoured the 

 ova of the trout, a war of extermination was resolved upon. 

 The trout were rapidly depreasing, and trout could not be 

 permitted to die that the grayling might live. 



The march of science, however, interposed to save the 

 grayling from annihilation in the Itchen. Artificial trout- 

 hatching removed temptation out of the grayling's path, 

 and hostilities ceased. It will be a boon to the grayling- 



