THE BROOK TROUT. 
Salmo Fontinalis. 
Tus merry month of May is the month of all others 
dear prescriptively to the trout-fisher. In England, it has 
been for centuries admitted the sweetest and the fairest 
month of spring; the month “where sweets compacted 
lie, the union of the earth and sky.” ‘Poets have sung 
it, and traditions hallowed it; and, from the old day, 
when the hoary druids culled with their golden hooks 
the sacred mistletoe, and the young maidens were astir 
before the morning star, to gather maydew in the 
flowery meadows, even to this hard, real, unideal nine- 
teenth century, the month of May has a character of its 
own, not with young lovers only, but with the world in 
general, different from that of any other of the twelve 
changeful cycles, and differently hailed of men. 
In England, as I have said, it is the sweetest, with us 
in America it is the first, I had almost said the only 
month of spring. For, in our western hemisphere, the 
winter hangs so heavily, and lingers so late into the 
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