A Spring Ramble by the Itchen. 45 



fisher to be able to run away from town on a nice snowy or 

 frosty winter day and be amongst the Hampshire grayling 

 within three hours. In a beautiful branch of the upper 

 water there were three years ago placed twelve brace and a 

 half of grayling. The next year — so rapidly do they grow — 

 there were quantities of fish six inches long, and the multi- 

 plication has gone on satisfactorily ever since. A grayling 

 of three pounds four ounces has been taken from the Itchen, 

 but, of course, they do not often attain that development, 

 although two-pounders are not rarities. 



At the higher portion of the Winchester waters the 

 rambler, after a couple of miles through grass and fallow, 

 with a charming plain beyond, and the commencement of 

 the Hampshire uplands on his left hand, might profitably 

 spend his time in either sketching or angling. There are 

 unusual facilities for both. From Winchester to Bishop- 

 stoke, as the traveller by the South- Western Railway may 

 see, the river is smooth in its flow, rippling enough for 

 music, but not enough for foam. Though it rises in the 

 down country between Alresford and Alton, and flows 

 through a vale which bears its name, it possesses none of 

 the wild charms of a mountain stream. It runs through 

 about twenty-five miles of delightfully rural scenery, minister- 

 ing to seventeen villages brought in a very literal sense 

 within the fold of the Church in days when abbots looted 

 and kings thieved; it throws out and receives numerous 

 tiny feeders, and is very often turned aside to wake up the 

 drowsy water-wheel of the sequestered mill. It waters a 

 goodly land ; just such land as the shrewd-headed Lot — if 

 he and the sheik Abraham had happened to hold their part- 

 ing interview on one of these loamy hills instead of the 

 Bethel grazing-grounds* — would, on lifting up his eyes, have 

 selected for his flocks' and herds. 



