ROACH AND RUDD. 45 
and you will find that he can be even hypercritical 
upon occasion. He will swim above it or below 
it, he will swim round and round it, only at last 
to be disgusted at its clumsiness, to give a 
delicate wave of his tail, and glide gracefully 
away. And then the roach of my acquaintance are 
like those of an eminent Frenchman—inclined to 
controversy, indecisive in conclusions. Some- 
times they will bite, sometimes they will not ; one 
never knows the reason why. To catch him the 
fisherman must have a subtle eye and a steady 
hand. One should take all sorts of precautions, 
for if he is curious, he is also at the same time 
excessively suspicious, and to catch him, one 
must use the finest possible tackle. 
The spot from which I watch my shoal of 
roach is half buried in lush summer grass, so that 
while I can see the fish, they cannot see me. All 
their movements are the very poetry of motion, 
and the shoal seem to act by some subtle, hidden 
impulse. They occupy a deep pool in a trout- 
stream, and as the anglers complain that they 
destroy the ground-food of the trout for eight 
months of the year, we have set about catching 
them. The small fry of their kind are easily 
taken in quantity, and to these the title of “ water- 
sheep” may be apt enough. An angler has to 
put forth all his wiles to get round the bigger 
