NOTE 8s 



fish in that respect to the salmon. Salmon and sea-trout are 

 migratory fish, which go to sea, and return, prompted by an 

 unemng and beautiful instinct, which compels them with un- 

 failing regularity of season to push onwards and upwards, until 

 they reaen their spawning - grounds. The trout has no such 

 experience, but in the late autumn and winter, when the male 

 becomes fuU of milt, and the female full of eggs, they select 

 suitable ground, viz. thin shallows, with gravel bed and rippling 

 water. September and October are too early for this. Blakey's 

 knowledge was confined probably to very early rivers in his own 

 Border country, where the trout might have begun their spawn- 

 ing movements in late October. The ordinary season for the 

 spawning of trout, with a few exceptions, may be fixed between 

 November 1 and January 1. Another doubtful statement in this 

 chapter is that a trout of a pound weight will clear a leap of four 

 feet. It is not the habit of the common or river trout {salmo 

 fario) to leap obstructions in its ascent to spawning-grounds, and 

 if it did, four feet is a most unlikely height. Amongst the giant 

 trout which are indicated as existing in foreign rivers, must be 

 now included those of the Antipodes, and perhaps it would be 

 more accurate to regard the trout of Dartmoor as the smallest 

 breed of British trout, and not the Welsh. I am afraid Blakey 

 was not a very keen observer of the habits of trout further than 

 their connection with sport. Trout do not, for example, pair at 

 the latter end of June, and if they did so in some North country 

 stream of which he knew, it was under very extraordinary 

 circumstances. 



History often repeats itself, and in the section of this chapter on 

 fly-fishing it will be noted that there is an italicised sentence to 

 impress upon anglers that they are vastly more fastidious about 

 the size and colour of their flies than the trout are. This con- 

 tention has been often revived, and has been quite recently made 

 prominent by Sir Herbert Maxwell, M.P., who successfully ex- 

 perimented with red and blue May-flies, in order to prove 

 jirecisely what Blakey argues. The reader must understand 

 that this is a point of controversy ; it is one of the matters 

 upon which the doctors differ, and upon which each person 

 must decide for himself. Personally, I have always been of 

 Blakey's opinion that shape and size are of more importance 

 than colour in artificial ilies. Perhaps, however, the good 

 professor was drawing the line a little too closely when he laid 

 down the rule, which has nevertheless been taken up by others 

 in more modern times, that three hackle-flies and three winged- 

 flies are a sufficient choice. For a long while hackles (as wingless 

 flies are called) were neglected, but some of our best fly-fishers 

 of to-day are coming back to the old idea that they may be made 

 to answer every purpose. The list of flies appended are to some 

 extent a repetition of a previous enumeration, but there are some 

 differences which warrant their reproduction in this place. "We 

 must repeat here, however, that the hooks are always too large, 



