is commonly supposed--will pass by any other prey to get at the silver morsel, which has been called by some human epicures the freshwater smelt. So, by-the-by, will a perch, the only fish that can live with pike on terms of armed neutrality or amicable defiance. Freshwater smelt, indeed! Why, the despised gudgeon, properly cleansed and treated with salt, is, when freshly caught and delicately fried, the smelt's decided superior; and it is perfectly surprising that the former is not more in request--is never asked for, in fact--at London restaurants. Yet, in Paris, at Bignon's, Champeaux', the Café Anglais, the Café de la Paix, the Maison Doré, or at the Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne, or at the Tête Noir at St. Cloud, no judicious diner misses _goujon_, when that fish is to be had, as it generally is. Why must we wait till we go abroad before we think of asking for gudgeon? Why should we pooh-pooh the dainty little fellow? Is it because it is so easy to catch him that his very name has passed into a proverb? Depend upon it, in spite of the ridicule which follows gudgeon-fishing as the facile entertainment of "a young angler," we make a great mistake, and lose many a dainty dish, in this scornful, or at least jocular, disregard of so sweet and delicate a fish. [Illustration: WINDSOR TO HAMPTON COURT.] Gudgeons swim in shoals, are always greedy biters, and, in fact, hook themselves with so charming and ready a will, that ladies and boys have no greater trouble than pulling them out of the water as soon as the hook, baited with a red worm, is dropped into it. No other labour, and no skill or activity beyond, is needed. The hook must be small, and the worm must be small also; and the gravelly bottom should be raked, to stir up the aquatic insects and larvæ, and so to summon the confiding fish together. Angling and rowing are not the only pursuits on the river or by its banks. The student of natural history and the landscape-painter, by which, in these days, is mostly meant the same, may botanise to their hearts' content; and, if they care more for popular and poetic than for scientific botany, may be glad to find there are still such beings as country folk, and still such names for flowering plants as codlings-and-cream, which the vulgar call _Epilobium hirsutum_. Call it what you will, this same plant, which is in truth the large-flowered willow-herb, and has a wholesome, but not very distinct or pungent odour, supposed to resemble the scent of apples with cream, as above named, is liked by cattle, and was at one time recommended for cultivation as fodder in wet places where other useful plants will not grow. The true forget-me-not--the _Vergiss-mein-nicht_ of the German tale--grows in extraordinary luxuriance and beauty in these fresh grassy places. An amphibious little weed, with red-shaded green leaves floating on the water, and with pink spike-blossoms, called the persicaria, is beautiful and