66 FISHING GOSSIP. 
Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, 
Where light disports in ever mingling dyes, 
While every beam new transient colours flings, 
Colours that change whene’er they move their wings.” 
A trout-stream with the May-fly on, as its brief 
season of existence is termed, is a remarkable sight 
not readily to be forgotten by any lover of nature. 
The hosts of insects springing into life, the luxurious 
trout sucking them down into the jaws of death, the 
circling swallows taking their share in the upper 
regions, and the rich quiet beauty of our English 
river-scenery forming, as it were, a frame of still-life 
to the busy picture. The May-fly affords the most 
nutritious and acceptable of all food for trout, impart- 
ing a rich flavour to the fish, as well as vigour and 
spirit to its muscular development ; thus rendering 
it more delicious on the table, more gamesome, gal- 
lant, and less easily conquered in the river. In local 
distribution the insect is limited and uncertain. It 
generally affects small streams and shady brooks, 
especially in the midland counties of England. It 
reigns over the Hampshire and Derbyshire rivers, it 
revels on the Middlesex Colne, but shuns the Surrey 
Wandle, and is seldom seen on the Axe. It generally 
avoids the English lakes, while the Westmeath lakes 
in Ireland derive their principal value as fishing- 
stations from this insect. It mostly makes its ap- 
pearance on the water between, say, the 18th and 
