DEPOPULATION OF TROUT-STREAMS. 109 
days of artificial rearing, restocking, and preser- 
vation generally, anglers and angling associations 
are apt either to forget or to ignore the balance 
of Nature. They destroy her appointed agents, 
and then fail to understand her consistent revenge. 
Now Nature rarely overlooks an insult. That 
the pink-spotted trout may live, a whole host of 
stream-haunting creatures are condemned; and 
this, too, often on the most insufficient evidence. 
Numerous waterfowl—the coot, rail, kingfisher, 
dipper—are said to be injurious to the interests 
of anglers, because they destroy the ova on the 
‘‘redds.” But it is doubtful whether there is any 
serious foundation for the charge, except in the 
case of the kingfisher ; and Frank Buckland it was 
who said that one might as well shoot a swallow 
skimming over a turnip-field, as a dipper over the 
spawning-beds in autumn. Even the harmless 
water-vole, which is a vegetarian, and feeds upon 
the thick, succulent stalks of aquatic plants, has 
been denounced as a destroyer of spawn. But 
the creature against which the orthodox angler 
“breathes hot roarings out” is the Otter. Yet 
how few fish does the Otter really destroy! The 
evidence to be gathered by those who live along 
its streams all goes to show that fresh-water 
crayfish form the staple of its food. It wanders 
miles in a night in search of this dainty, and will 
not partake of soft-bodied fish so long as this 
