IRISH LOACH-TROLLING. 19 
cyphers. The pounds avoirdupois which they are 
found to weigh after they attain a respectable size, 
may possibly give a fair approximation to their re- 
spective ages. Sooner or later, however, the day of 
decline arrives. Fly-fishing or trolling, I have hooked 
during the season occasional specimens of a long, 
tapering, huge-headed animal; all skin, bone, and 
fins, like a flying-fish, but languid in his move- 
ments, voracious in his appetites, and seemingly in- 
different to his fate. Shall the melancholy fact be 
recorded ?—it is our once gallant friend ferox, who 
could in better days run out forty yards of line in a 
breath, spring from the lowest depths of his domain 
above the surface with fly or loach in his mouth, and 
contemptuously turn up his nose half-a-dozen of 
times at net or gaff; but now, alas! wabbling about 
like a miserable snig in his dotage and decrepitude. 
And as if this were not sufficient humiliation for the 
pride and paragon of inland waters, the rustic fishers, 
no more respectful of his character than the ichthyo- 
logists, have combined to call him in this state a 
“piper.” Date obolum Belisario—gently remove the 
hook from his aged jaws; return him safely to his 
native element, and crown the deed of charity by 
sending after him-as many loaches as you can spare. 
When you next visit the lake you will probably 
witness his obsequies performed and his bones picked 
by a merciless group of.gulls and scarecrows, scream- 
