190 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING. 



have already done much to limit ; unless that small, and 

 I think very inconsiderate body of persons, who would 

 clear the Thames of the jack altogether, carry the day. 

 Perhaps such a clearance could never be thoroughly 

 effected; but an organized and sustained raid on the 

 jack in the ditches and creeks during spawning time would 

 go far towards it. Let it be noted, by the way, to the 

 credit of our lady and gentlemen jack, that they have no 

 Mormomte tendencies. Monogamy is the law of their 

 community, though I will not say it is never broken. It 

 was this tendency to pair that helped me to capture a fine 

 brace of jack early one February, about twenty years ago, 

 in the river at Cranford. I was jack fishing in the lake in 

 Earl Fitzhardinge's park (where, through the kind inter- 

 cession of my old friend, the Rev. Heathfield Weston 

 Hickes, the rector of the parish, I have had many a good 

 day's fishing), and had left a paternoster for perch baited 

 with gudgeon in the sluggish stream just above the small 

 bridge. On my return from a walk round, trolling, I 

 found I had to encounter a fine jack which had attached 

 herself to the pateraostor, and after no little trouble I 

 landed my fish, which scaled over 14 lbs. In the same 

 manner, and exactly at the same spot, just a week after- 

 wards, I took another — the gentleman fish this time — 

 weighing 13 lbs. I have no doubt but that these were 

 an engaged, or rather married pair, just at the com- 

 mencement of their honeymoon, and that after the cruel 

 (I have often thought since it was very cruel) capture of 

 his bride, the bridegroom disconsolate hung about the 

 spot, and so came also to a miserable end within a few 

 days of the decease of his wife. 



Passing on from this piteous case of early dissolution of 



