HAL.—By his mode of rising. He is lying at the top of the water, taking the flies as they sail down by him, which a grayling scarcely ever does. _He_ rises rapidly from the bottom or middle of the water, on the contrary—darting upwards, and, having seized his fly, returns to his station. There! a grayling has risen. I do not mean, however, that this habit is invariable; I have sometimes seen trout feed like grayling, and grayling like trout, but neither of these fish emits bubbles of air in rising, as dace and chub do. PHYS.—I have one! He has taken my blue dun, and must be a small one, for he plays with no vigour. HAL.—He is about ¾lb.—a fish of two years and a half old—very good for the table. I will land him if possible. PHYS.—There! He is off! HAL.—This happens often with grayling: their mouths are tender, and unless the hook catches in the upper lip, which is rather thick, it is more than an equal chance that the fish escapes you. PHYS.—Here, I have another, that has taken the stretcher, and as it is a larger hook, I hope he may be held. He is likewise a larger fish—but how oddly he spins! This, I suppose, must be owing to his large back fin, by which the stream carries him round. There he is: he has quite twisted my link; it would not be amiss to have swivels for this kind of fishing. HAL.—It is a fish in good season,—dark above, fair below, and weighs, I should suppose, about 1¼lb. PHYS.—As this is the first grayling I have seen of my own taking, I must measure, weigh, and examine him. HAL.—We can do this hereafter. See, our fish barrel; he can be kept alive till a more convenient time of the day. PHYS.—I am disposed to gratify my curiosity immediately: for to acquire information is at least as interesting to me as catching fish. I shall kill him by a blow on the head. He is not, I suppose, worth crimping afterwards? HAL.—Certainly not, at this time; and it is not necessary with a fish of this size, which ought to be fried; but if we catch a large grayling, approaching to 2lbs., he shall be killed, crimped, and boiled, like our Denham trout; you will then find him excellent, and not inferior, in my opinion, to the best perch—more like the most exquisitely tasted of all our fish, the red mullet. PHYS.—Out of the water, this is a handsome fish, broader round the middle, and more hog-backed than the trout, but gracefully tapering towards the tail. The belly, I see, is silvery with yellow; and the pectoral, ventral, and anal fins are almost gold-coloured; the back gray with small black spots, and the back fin of a beautiful bright purple, with black and blue spots. It has likewise an agreeable odour; so that both from its colour and smell it does not seem undeserving the title given it by St. Ambrose, of _the flower of fishes_. It measures, I find, 14 inches in length; in girth 7½. It weighs 17 ounces. It has 10 spines in the pectoral fin, 23 in the dorsal, 16 in the ventral, 14 in the anal, and 18 in the caudal.