196 THE RIDDLE OF THE BUEBOT 



Clyde, and many other Scottish waters where they were 

 unknown before. Howbeit, despite the confusion 

 arising from the artificial distribution of grayling, 

 evidence is not wanting that this fish is truly 

 indigenous only in that group of rivers which had 

 connection with the Rhine in post-glacial times and 

 which now contain the burbot. Mr. T. F. Pritt says in 

 his Book of the Grayling (1888) — ' With the exception 

 of the Hodder, a tribiitary of the Ribble, and the 

 Wenning, a tributary of the Lune, grayling are found 

 in all the main rivers of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and 

 in most of their larger tributaries.' Now the Ribble and 

 the Lune are the only rivers of Yorkshire and Derby- 

 shire which flow to the west, except the Mersey which, 

 rising in the extreme south-west of Yorkshire, has been 

 polluted out of all semblance of a fish-producing stream. 

 All the other waters of these counties flow into the 

 catchment of the Ouse, the Trent, or the Don, and may 

 therefore, like the burbot of these rivers, claim descent 

 from a Rhenish ancestry. If, as is probable, grayling 

 have ceased to exist in the rivers of the Fen district, 

 their disappearance, like that of trout, may be attributed 

 to the ravages of pike, which always attain a destructive 

 ascendancy in sluggish waters. It can scarcely be 

 a mere coincidence that both grayling and burbot 

 should be absent from the Thames valley and abundant 

 in the east-flowing rivers aforesaid. 



Anglers commonly assume, I think without good 

 reason, that the south-flowing Hampshire rivers have 

 held grayling since immemorial time. ' There be many 

 of these fishes,' wrote Izaak Walton, ' in the delicate 



