almost as he looks at them; hear the sweet notes of the cuckoo, and the unceasing carol of noisier birds; watch the sportive lamb or the timid hare; and chronicle the ever-changing seasons as they roll away on their everlasting journey of progress. Without pretending to rival the hundred and one guides to angling that now flood the market, I shall take a glance at a few of the more popular of the anglers’ fishes; not, however, in any scientific or other order of precedence, but beginning with the trout, seeing that the salmon is discussed in a separate division of this work. Of all our fresh-water fishes, the one that is most plentiful, and the one that is most worthy of notice by anglers, is the trout. It can be fished for with the simplest possible kind of rod in the most tiny stream, or be captured by elaborate apparatus on the great lochs of Scotland. There are so many varieties of it as to suit all tastes; there are well-flavoured burn trout, not so large as a small herring, and there are lake giants that, when placed in the scales, will pull down a twenty pound weight with the greatest ease. The usual run of river trout are about six or eight ounces in weight; a pound trout is an excellent reward for the patient angler. Where a trouting stream flows through a rich and fertile district of country, with abundant drainage, the trout are usually well-conditioned and large, and of good flavour; but when the country through which the stream flows is poor and rocky, with no drains carrying in food to enrich the stream, the fish will, as a matter of course, be lanky and flavourless; they may be numerous, but they will be of small size. It is curious, too, to note the difference of the fish of the same stream: some of the trout taken in Tweed, and in other rivers as well, are sharp in their colour, have fine fat plump thick shoulders, great depth of belly, and beautiful pink flesh of excellent flavour; others again are lean and flavourless. The colour of trout is of course dependent on the quality and abundance of its food; those are best which exist on ground-feeding, living upon worms and such fresh-water crustaceans as are within reach. Fly-taking fish—those that indulge in the feed of ephemeræ that takes place a few times every day—are comparatively poor in flesh and weak in flavour. As to where fishers should resort, must be left to themselves. I was once beguiled out to the Dipple, but it was a hungry sort of river, where the trout were on the average about three ounces and scarce enough; although I must say that for a few minutes, when “the feed” was on the water, there was an enormous display of fish, but they preferred to remain in their native stream, a tributary of the Clyde I think. The mountain streams and lochs of Scotland, or the placid and picturesque lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland, are the paradise of anglers.