BROOK TROUT 



Ethics of the Woods. 



Has anyone ever thought of the trout as a great 

 moral agent, a conservator of human welfare, as well 

 as a contributor to sport ? If not, why not "? 



Let us consider: Has not this universal favorite 

 among game-fishes posed for decades as an economic 

 factor to increase the revenues of States and replenish 

 depleted exchequers ? Has he not led the prospector 

 and explorer up the unmapped defiles to the crown of 

 the divide and discovered rare plants, timber tracts, 

 precious ores, and water-powers ? Has he not stimu- 

 lated a love for nature, made men good, virtuous, and 

 humane? Given occupation to idlers, lured loafers 

 from demoralizing environment, filled libraries with 

 poetry, belles lettres, and an angling bibliography as 

 unique as it is entertaining? Has he not, in fact, 

 been a potential instrument to distribute population 

 over the wilderness places, and so filled up the Arca- 

 dian recesses of the Catskills, the Adirondacks, the 

 White Mountains, the Appalachians, the Rockies, and 

 the Cascades with cottages, parks, and summer hotels, 

 where the worker and wage-earner may rest from their 

 labors and the butterflies of fashion find a healthful 

 and sesthetic elysium ? 



Reflecting in its piebald garb the iridescence of 

 the gauze-winged ephemera and parti-colored flowers 

 which bespangle its sequestered haunts in the leafy 

 month of June, it inspires poets, generates good-fellow- 



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