260 OTHEE FISH AND GAME 



ican and Canadian angler knows that there are times 

 Avhen one is not aware that he has attracted the atten- 

 tion of a brook-trout until he is withdrawing his line 

 for another cast. But this is no proof of the absence 

 of game qualities on the part of the fish. Nor does 

 it arise from the fact that fontinalis had been for some 

 time previously engaged in quietly sucking down the 

 fly. No. He is no poltroon of a sucker, but a game- 

 ster from start to finish. From his lair beneath some 

 lily -pad or under the shadow of an overhanging tree 

 or rock, often within the margin of heavy rapids 

 where the floods clap their hands in frolicsome glee, 

 the leopard of the brook has had his attention at- 

 tracted by some peculiar motion of a somewhat re- 

 markable fly at or near the surface of the water, which 

 at the moment that it makes a dart, as if to escape 

 alike from his observation and his reach, is seized by 

 him with a rush that for velocity excels the motion of 

 the cast as it is withdrawn from the water, and if es- 

 sential to success is not infrequently terminated by a 

 leap into mid-air and on to the apparently vanishing 

 hook. Whatever he may do in taking bait, the brook- 

 trout in his native home can never be accused of suck- 

 ing down the artificial fly in the manner described by 

 Mr. Stein. To the dry fly-fisherman and to many an- 

 other angler too is the picture a most familiar one, so 

 admirably portrayed in water-colors and upon canvas 

 by Mr. Kilbourne and Mr. Brackett, of a shapely and 

 brilliant crescent of olive and silver and crimson and 

 gold, carrying with it the lure picked from the sur- 

 face of the water or leaping upon it with open mouth 

 in its descent, and in either case stimulating a corre- 



