300 SALMON AND TROUT. 
surmount obstacles and profit by opportunities in the filling of 
his creel. But as the number and the skill of our fly fishers 
are continually increasing, the question still remains how the 
breed of British Salmonide can be kept up to meet the grow- 
ing demand. Every true brother of the angle who pursues his 
pastime in a liberal and unselfish spirit ought, therefore, to 
direct his attention to the breeding and feeding of these fish, 
valuable as they are at once for sport and for the table. And 
it is important at the outset to draw attention to some condi- 
tions of this twofold problem which seem to be but imperfectly 
understood. 
In the first place, the fact must be recognised that it is 
easier to keep up the number than the size of the trout in our 
best streams. Modern agriculture with its demand for thorough 
drainage tends to diminish the ordinary volume of water in our 
brooks and rivers. Fifty years ago, when there came a heavy 
spell of wet weather a great extent of spongy moor and meadow 
land along the watercourses imbibed and held up a large pro- 
portion of the rainfall. The spate came less suddenly and 
lasted longer, and in ordinary weather the banks continually 
gave out water to keep up the stream. Now it is either ‘a 
feast or a fast.’ The well-laid drains flush the rain water 
rapidly into the streams; the floods come down sooner and 
last for a shorter time, and the ordinary level of four-fifths of 
our trout rivers is very much below what it used to be when 
agriculture, though more thriving, was less scientific. 
This diminution in the volume of water means, of course, a 
reduced supply of insect food for our trout. Nor is this all. 
Farmers and millers combine in many districts to keep the 
weeds close cut, and every weed-cutting destroys by wholesale 
the larvee of those insects on which the trout depends most for 
his ordinary food. As I walk along some well-known beck and 
see huge heaps of water weed drying in the sun, I feel sorely 
tempted to use a naughty word when I think of the millions of 
possible Ephemere which have ‘closed their little being without 
life’ hopelessly entangled in the ruins of their green abodes. 
