170 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING!. 



to it, and the statement in support of it to the effect that 

 grayling are only found in streams on which monasteries 

 once stood is not as a matter of fact correct. Nor again 

 would it have been very easy to have brought such a very 

 delicately-constitutioned fish from the Continent. We 

 shall, therefore, probably be correct in assuming that the 

 grayling, like the trout, is indigenous to this country. 



The fact that they are not so widely distributed in the 

 United Kingdom as trout does not really militate against 

 this assumption. There is no fish so particular aa to the 

 kind of water it delights in, or whose well-being and 

 increase is so affected thereby. There are no grayling in 

 Ireland or Scotland, except in the Clyde, where they have 

 been introduced. They are found, however, in the Orkney 

 Isles. Wales, also, is graylingless, except in the " border " 

 rivers, unless the few exceptions which from time to time 

 have been noted prove the rule. They have their land, 

 or perhaps I should say their water marks, and like certain 

 birds are not found beyond certain lines of longitude and 

 latitude even in the circumscribed area of this " tight little 

 island." 



" Est quadain prodire tenus, sed non datur ultra." 

 The nightingale never crosses westward the boundaries of 

 Devonshire; the grayling will not pass into Somersetshire. 

 His most loved waters are those of Hampshire, Wiltshire, 

 Herefordshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Cumberland, 

 and yet by no means all waters in these counties. Com- 

 pared with the ubiquitous trout we find only 

 " Here and there a grayling." 



The best grayling rivers are the Test, the Ichen, the 

 (Hampshire) Avon, the Lugg and its tributary the Arrow, 



