BROOK TROUT 



Wild life, hypnotism, the home of Health ! The 

 true angler sees much, but will realize that as com- 

 pared with what is about him, he sees very little. 



Pluck a single leaf and look at it carefully. Even 

 a skilled artist must keep it before him as a model, to 

 mimic the delicate veinings and exact shape. Break 

 a bough from a maple-tree, and try to see it. Some 

 of the leaves are mere lines to the sight — edgewise; 

 others are foreshortened;] many are shaded by com- 

 panions. Through them reigns an intensity of reflec- 

 tion and brilliant semi-transparence acting upon and 

 through surfaces extremely complex in shape, curve, 

 and relative position. The light is in among the 

 leaves and alters the appearance of the bough from 

 within as well as without. Turn it, hold it in any 

 position, and it is perfect ; yet not another bough in all 

 these miles of forest is just like it! Multiply the 

 woods until they are a wilderness swayed by wind or 

 quiet in unity of rest — ^flecked by driving cloud- 

 shadows or flooded with moonlight or sunshine. Man- 

 ifestly, we cannot see them. Only a few of even the 

 subtle and weird patterns woven by ferns and mosses, 

 and flowering grasses and plants, on the floor of the 

 forest can be noted or understood. 



Above all. Mystery reigns. The stream drowses 

 under long, partly seen roofs of foliage, or under lov- 

 ing, interlacing boughs of a water-tunnel whose portals 

 and winding sides are a tapestry of leaf and twig, 



misty with rain, unearthly as they shine in the wan 



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