A Spring Ramble by the Itchen. 47 



probably elsewhere, they call this fellow the storm cock, 

 because of his stormy-petrel qualities. We can hear him 

 singing a defiant kind of war song, and probably his mate is 

 near, sitting over her four or five eggs, purple-white, with pale 

 brown spots. The water-wagtail, tamest of our stream- 

 haunting birds, is out and about, and one fearless little 

 busy-body, restlessly occupying a spit of gravel in the middle 

 of the brook, seems to have an eye to our rods, which we 

 have long ago abandoned, and which, there is no harm in 

 repeating, we brought out more for the sake of airing than 

 using them. 



In the foregoing remarks I have spoken of the Itchen and 

 its trout in terms, may be, that will make an angler's mouth 

 water, just as that seven brace taken in this very meadow 

 yesterday morning made mine perform that figurative opera- 

 tion. And the experienced angler does not require remind- 

 ing that his pursuit is the most uncertain of sports, and that 

 seven-brace days are rare in his calendar. But take it all in 

 all, the Itchen is a good trout river. I have known it for 

 some years as a rambler, though not much as an angler, 

 and have seen the kind of sport it yields under average 

 circumstances and with due exercise of skill. The skill, 

 however, must be high, and to skill must be added know- 

 ledge of the water. 



The large size of the trout has always astonished me. 

 A fish of six pounds weight was taken a few years since with 

 a fly, and that is indeed a noble specimen of the breed ; but 

 this, I presume, would be an event in a generation. Some 

 of the regular anglers, Hampshire gentlemen, who know 

 their ground, reckon their season's sport by hundreds, and 

 not by dozens. The Itchen fish have a peculiarity which 

 may be noticed occasionally in other streams ; of two fish 

 precisely alike in every respect to all appearance, one when 



