Salmonia: Or: Days of Fly Fishing. In a Series of Conversations; with Some Account of the Habits of Fishes Belonging to the Genus Salmo

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Carey and Lea, 1832 - Fishes - 312 pages

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Page 182 - A rainbow can only occur when the clouds containing or depositing the rain are opposite to the sun, — and in the evening the rainbow is in the east, and in the morning in the west ; and as our heavy rains, in this climate, are usually brought by the westerly wind, a rainbow in the west indicates that the bad weather is on the road, by the wind, to us ; whereas the rainbow in the east proves that the raiii in theso clouds is passing from us.
Page 93 - The swallow is one of my favourite birds, and a rival of the nightingale ; for he glads my sense of seeing as much as the other does my sense of hearing. He is the joyous prophet of the year, the harbinger of the best season. He lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of nature ; winter is unknown to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England in autumn, for the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and the palms of Africa: he has always objects of pursuit, and his success is secure.
Page 187 - ... sees chains of causes and effects so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of each other; and, in science, so many natural miracles, as it were, have been brought to light, — such as the fall of stones from meteors in the atmosphere, the disarming...
Page 183 - Swallows follow the flies and gnats, and flies and gnats usually delight in warm strata of air; and as warm air is lighter, and usually moister than cold air, when the warm strata of air are high, there is less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by the mixture with cold air; but when the warm and moist air is close to the surface, it is almost certain that, as the cold air flows down into it, a deposition of water will take place.
Page 17 - ... who, alarmed at your approach, rapidly hide themselves beneath the flowers and leaves of the water-lily ; and as the season advances, to find all these objects changed for others of the same kind, but better and brighter, till the swallow and the trout contend as it •were for the gaudy May-fly, and...
Page 27 - I may almost say, a pastoral scene. The meadows have the verdure which even the Londoners enjoy as a peculiar feature of the English landscape. The river is clear, and has all the beauties of a trout stream of the larger size, — there rapid and here still, and there tumbling in foam and fury over abrupt dams upon clean gravel, as if pursuing a natural course. And that Island, with its poplars and willows, and the flies making it their summer paradise, and its little...
Page 98 - Look at the bird ! She dashes into the water, falling like a rock, and raising a column of spray ; she has fallen from a great height. And now she rises again into the air ; what an extraordinary sight ! " Hal.— She is pursuing her prey, and is one of our fraternity, — a catcher of fish.
Page 98 - Hal. — You are right, it is an eagle, and of a rare and peculiar species — the grey or silver eagle, a noble bird! From the size of the animal, it must be the female; and her aery is in that high rock. I dare say the male is not far off.
Page 99 - They at first made small circles, and the young birds imitated them ; they paused on their wings, waiting till they had made their first flight, and then took a second and larger gyration, — always rising towards the sun, and enlarging their circle of flight so as to make a gradually extending spiral. The young ones still slowly followed, apparently flying better as they mounted ; and they continued this sublime kind of exercise, always rising till they became mere points in the air, and the young...
Page 15 - The search after food is an instinct belonging to our nature ; and from the savage in his rudest and most primitive state, who destroys a piece of game, or a fish, with a club or spear, to man in the most cultivated state of society, who employs artifice, machinery, and the resources of various other animals, to secure his object, the origin of the pleasure is similar, and its...

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