Page images
PDF
EPUB

NINTH DAY.

HALIEUS-POIETES-ORNITHER--PHYSICUS.

FISHING FOR HUCHO.

Scene-The Fall of the Traun, Upper Austria. Time-July.

POIET. This is a glorious scene! And the fall of this great and clear river, with its accompaniments of wood, rock, and snow-clad mountain, would alone furnish matter for discussion and conversation for many days. This place is quite the paradise of a poetical angler; the only danger is that of satiety with regard to sport; for these great grayling and trout are so little used to the artificial fly, that they take almost any thing moving on the top of the water. You see I have put on a salmon fly, and still they rise at it, though they never can have seen any thing like it before-and it is, in fact, not like any thing in nature.

HAL.-You are right, they never have seen any thing like it before; but, in its motion, it is like a large fly, and this is the season for large flies. The stone fly and the May fly, you see, occasionally drop upon the water, and the colour of your large fly is not unlike that of the stone fly; but if, instead of being here in the beginning of July, you had visited this spot, as I once did, in the beginning of June, you would have found more difficulty in catching grayling here, though not so much as in our English rivers-in the Test, the Derwent, or the Dove.

POIET.-How could this be?

HAL. At this season the large flies had not yet appeared; the small blue dun was on the water, and I was obliged to use a fly the same as that which suits our spring and late autumnal fishing. The fish refused all large flies, but took greedily small ones; and, as usually happens when small flies are used, more fish escaped after being hooked than were taken; and these I found, the next day, were become as sagacious as our Dove or Test fish, and refused the artificial fly, though they greedily took the natural fly.

PHYS. These fish, then, have the same habits as our English salmons and trouts ?

HAL. The principle to which I have referred in two former conversations must be general, though it has seemed to me, that they lost this memory sooner than the fish of our English rivers, where fly fishing is common. This, however, may be fancy, yet I have referred it to a kind of hereditary disposition, which has been formed and transmitted from their progenitors.

PHYS. However strange it may appear, I can believe this. When the early voyagers discovered new islands, the birds upon them were quite tame, and easily killed by sticks and stones, being fearless of man; but they soon learned to know their enemy, and this newly acquired sagacity was possessed by their offspring, who had never seen a man. Wild and domesticated ducks are, in fact, from the same original type: it is only necessary to compare them, when hatched together under a hen, to be convinced of the principle of the hereditary transmission of habits,-the wild young ones instantly fly from man, the tame ones are indifferent to his presence.

POIET.-No one can be less disposed than I am to limit the powers of living nature, or to doubt the capabilities of organized struc

tures; but it does appear to me quite a dream, to suppose that a fish, pricked by the hook of the artficial fly, should transmit a dread of it to its offspring, though he does not even long retain the memory of it himself.

HAL.-There are instances quite as extraordinary-but I will not dwell upon them, as I am not quite sure of the fact which we are discussing; I have made a guess only, and we must observe more minutely to establish it; it may be even as you suppose—a mere dream.

POIET.-I shall go and look at the fall: I am really satiated with sport; this is the twentieth fish I have taken in an hour, and it is a grayling of at least fifteen inches long; and there is a trout of eighteen, and several salmon trout, which look as if they had run from the sea.

HAL.-These salmon trout have run from a sea, but not from a salt sea; they are fish of the Traun See, as it is called by the Germans, or Traun Lake, which is emptied by this river.

PHYS.-Tell us why they are so different from the river trout, or why there should be two species or varieties in the same water.

HAL.-Your question is a difficult one, and

it has already been referred to in a former conversation; but I shall repeat what I stated before, that qualities occasioned by food, peculiarities of water, &c. are transmitted to the offspring, and produce varieties which retain their characters as long as they are exposed to the same circumstances, and only slowly lose them. Plenty of good food gives a silvery colour and round form to fish, and the offspring retain these characters. Feeding much on larvæ and on shell-fish thickens the stomach, and gives a brighter yellow to the belly and fins, which become hereditary characters. Even these smallest salmon trout have green backs, only black spots, and silvery bellies; from which it is evident, that they are the offspring of lake trout, or lachs forelle, as it is called by the Germans; whilst the river trout, even when 4 or 5lbs., as we see in one of these fish, though in excellent season, have red spots.But why that exclamation?

POIET.-What an immense fish! There he is! HAL.-I see nothing.

POET.-At the edge of the pool, below the fall, I saw a fish, at least two or three feet long, rising with great violence in the water, as if in the pursuit of small fish; and at the

« PreviousContinue »