STOCKING. 125 



expense — sportsmen who do not let the water 

 nor attempt to derive any pecuniary advantage 

 from it, but keep it purely and only for their 

 friends and their own sport. I have heard, on 

 good authority, of one sportsman of this class 

 who actually introduced pike into his water ! 



There is, however, among the opponents of 

 stocking a class for whom the true sportsman 

 can have no sympathy — proprietors of trout 

 water, who either let the entire fishing by the 

 season or take in a number of rods to whom it is 

 altogether a matter of profit and loss, coupled, 

 if possible, with free fishing for themselves and 

 an occasional friend. Their notion is, that the 

 greater the rent they can obtain and the smaller 

 the amount they have to expend, whether on 

 keepers, weed cutting, stocking, or other neces- 

 sary work, the larger is their profit. They seem 

 to overlook the fact that the effect of this policy 

 must be, in the end, to kill the goose that lays 

 the golden eggs. 



There are even now, at the end of the nine- Opponents of 

 teenth century, a few who honestly believe that stocking. 

 putting artificially- bred fish into a river has some 

 dreadful and inexplicable effect on the old in- 

 habitants of the stream ; in fact, some go so far 

 as to say that, if not the chief, this is one of 

 the chief causes of the serious and progressive 

 decline in sport during the last few years. If 



