BY SEVERNSIDE IN SHROPSHIRE 71 
Shropshire at any rate—fora brace. The fish may 
be of good size, though. Two, each well over three 
pounds, were captured by spinning one day in 
1917, near Cound, which is between Cressage and 
Atcham, and they now adorn a wall at Cound 
Lodge behind honourable glass. Grayling find 
the river much to their liking where it has 
sandy, gravelly beds, and in some years, as in 
1913, quite good sport with them is reported. 
Of coarse fish, pike, perch, chub, roach, dace, 
there is a good stock. 
“You have learned many things, my friend, 
but one thing you have not learned—the art of 
resting,” to quote a passage from “The In- 
tellectual Life.” If any busy man is keenly 
desirous of acquiring this vital art, a July day in 
Severnside meadows ought to help him. If there 
has been no freshening rain, fly-fishing for trout 
is out of the question, except early or late in the 
day, so one may potter about— 
“ Any man that walks the mead, 
In bud or blade, or bloom, may find 
According as his humours lead, 
A meaning suited to his mind” 
—and enjoy the fresh air and the.smell of the 
country ; taking, in short, the cue from Darwin, 
himself born at Shrewsbury in 1809, when ina 
letter to his wife he wrote: ‘‘At last I fell asleep 
on the grass, and awoke with a chorus of birds 
singing around me, and squirrels running up the 
tree, and some woodpeckers laughing; and it 
was as pleasant and rural a scene as ever I saw, 
