For some time both before and after spawning, the parent trout are unfit for the table — they become black about the head and body, and their flesh is soft, watery, and unwholesome. After the operation, when they return to the deep still water, where they pass the winter, their shape and colour undergo great alterations. They become lank and lean, their heads appear disproportionally large, and their bodies acquire a dusky and disagreeable hue, little resembling their usual bright and beautiful tints, the contemplation of which induced our patriarch, the enthusiastic Izaac, to exclaim with Solomon, "every thing is beautiful in its season." What is worse, their skin, particularly near their gills, becomes infested with a parasitic insect (Lernea trutta), which is a kind

male salmon, and causing it to come in contact with the last ova deposited. He then covered them in beneath the gravel, and in due time they produced fish. The ova he had covered in without impregnation produced nothing. He repeated the experiment frequently, and always with similar results. He has even taken two female salmon in the act of spawning. The ova of one he impregnated with milt from a male; the ova of the other he did not impregnate. He covered in each under equal conditions, apart, in the same spawning-bed. The ova that he had caused to be impregnated were productive; the other proved perfectly barren. This experiment was repeated, and the result was ever the same."

of diminutive leech, in shape resembling a small clove, and called by Walton "the sug or trout louse." The fish remain in this state till returning spring exerts its invigorating influence, producing abundance of food, and enabling them to remove to the more shallow parts of the stream and its stickles, up which they advance by degrees. Here, becoming gradually purified and strengthened, they are at last fair game for the sportsman, if they by chance escape the wiles of the prowling poachers who are allowed by an indifferent legislature to destroy so wantonly a large proportion of what might, with hardly any trouble, become staple food for the dense population of these islands, and be an endless source of innocent and healthful enjoyment.

Trout, in common with most kinds of fish, feed chiefly by night; but in cloudy weather, and, when the water is discoloured, even in sunshine, they often feed in the day-time — induced, no doubt, by the similarity to their vision of these conditions of the water and atmosphere to the evening twilight, and by the presence of a tempting quantity of flies or other kinds of food. At any rate, cloudy days are those on which the angler's wiles are most likely to be successful. The trout then haunt, for feeding places, the sides

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and tails of swift currents, or scours (called in the west of England stickles), little turns and eddies, where insects are carried by the stream, and many other places, a knowledge of which is indispensable to successful practice. Indeed, it is a fact which we would earnestly impress upon the aspirant to piscatorial renown, that to know where to cast the flies is nearly as important as to know how to cast them. A person ignorant of the former would have almost as little chance of success as if he were unable to perform the latter. It is true that in early spring, when food is scarce and the fish are obliged to depart in some measure from their usual stationary habits, in order to procure a meal, his random-thrown flies may sometimes fall in the way of "a passing inhabitant of the liquid element; " but when, as the season advances, this necessity for roving is at an endwhen the fish obtain their prey with no other trouble than that of seizing it occupying particular feeding-places, and taking at pleasure the food within their ken-in this case, he who would ensnare

"The monarch of the brook"

must not expect that "monarch" to leave his dining room and rush headlong after "the trea

cherous flies," wherever they may happen to be! Certainly not. He must have the politeness to "drop a line," neatly and carefully, at the monarchial dwelling, coax its occupant to accept of the proffered invitation — to be led a dance by the nose, and, in due course, to be transferred, con amore, into the osier retreat of his fish basket. But to be serious. This knowledge, as we have said, is indispensable, and it can only be acquired by observation and experience, for the peculiarities of every river render it impossible to give general instructions.

It is thought probable—and the opinion is supported by Buffon, Yarrell, and many other eminent naturalists-that fishes are led to their chiefly by their sense of smelling.

prey

Such, indeed, is the abundance of the olfactory nerves in certain fishes, that the celebrated Cuvier conjectured that "something more important than the occasional power of smelling is given them." This additional function he conceived to be that of recognising certain substances not in themselves odoriferous when mixed with or dissolved in water thus enabling the fish to make a selection of such waters as may be purest, or otherwise adapted to their habits. Mr. Stoddart is undoubtedly correct in stating that trout, when feeding on flies,

trust, in general, more to their sight in seeing them than to their sense of smelling; and that they dart at them with a velocity too great to be checked by any sudden discovery. Some naturalists entertain contrary opinions as to the faculty of smelling in fish. Among them is Mr. Erasmus Wilson, who (in an ably written chapter in Ephemera's "Handbook of Angling") places it "next in order to that of hearing, and greatly inferior to sight."

Naturalists are not fully agreed about the power of vision in fishes; indeed, unanimity cannot be expected on a subject depending so much upon analogy and conjecture. Mr. Yarrell says" the external structure of the eye itself is but slightly rounded, but the lens is spherical, a structure which, in a dense medium, affords intense power of vision at short or moderate distances rather than a long sight. When water is clear, smooth, and undisturbed, the sight of fishes is very acute. This is well known to anglers, who prefer a breeze that ruffles the surface, well knowing that they can approach much nearer the objects of their pursuit, and carry on their various deceptions with a much better chance of success." Professor Rennie, Professor Wilson, and some other modern writers, who are the advocates of the non-imita