SEVENTH DAY.

HALIEUS-POIETES ORNITHER

PHYSICUS.

HAL.

GRAYLING FISHING.

SCENE-Leintwardine, near Ludlow.
TIME-Beginning of October.

YOU have reached your quarters. Here is your home-a rural, peaceable, and unassuming inn, with as worthy a host and hostess as may be found in this part of England. The river glides at the bottom of the garden, and there is no stream in England more productive of grayling. The surrounding scenery is not devoid of interest, and the grounds in the distance are covered with stately woods, and laid out (or rather their natural beauties developed) by the hand of a master, whose liberal and enlightened mind even condescended to regard the

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amusements of the angler; and he could hardly have contributed in a more effectual manner to their comforts, than by placing the good people, who were once his servants, in this comfortable inn.

PHYS.-Are we to fish according to any rule, as to quantity or size of fish?

HAL.-You are at perfect liberty to fish as you like; but as it is possible you may catch grayling only of this year, and which are not longer than the hand, I conclude you will return such pigmies to the river as a matter of propriety, though not of necessity.

POIET. This river seems formed of two other streams, which join above our inn. What are the names of its sources?

HAL.-The small river to the left is called the Teme, or Little Teme, and though the least stream, it gives name to the river: the other, and more copious, stream, is called the Clun. The little Teme contains principally trout; the Clun, both trout and grayling: but the fish are more abundant in the meadows, between this place and

Downton, than in other parts of the river; for above, the stream is too rapid and shallow to be favourable to their increase; and below, it is joined by other streams, and becomes too abundant in coarse fish.

POIET.-I cannot understand why the grayling should be so scarce a fish in England. It is abundant in many districts on the continent; but in this island it is found, I believe, only in a few rivers, and does not exist, I think, either in Ireland or Scotland. Yet being an Alpine fish, and naturally fond of cool water, it might have been expected among the Highlands.

HAL. I formerly used to account for this by supposing it an imported fish, and not indigenous; but, in some of my continental excursions, I have seen it living only under such peculiar circumstances, that I doubt the correctness of this my early opinion.

POIET. Which was, I conclude, that it was introduced by the monks, in the time when England was under the See of Rome. As a favourite fish of St. Ambrose it was worth cultivating, as well as for its own

sake; and I think you have done wrong to relinquish this idea, for, as far as my recollection serves me, the rivers that contain it are near the ruins of great monasteries. The Avon, near Salisbury; the Ure, near Fountain's Abbey; the Wye, near the great Abbey of Tintern; and, if I am not mistaken, in the lower part of this valley there are the remains of an extensive establishment of friars.

HAL.-But there are rivers near the ruins of some of the most magnificent establishments of this kind in Europe, and those nearest the continent, where the grayling is not found; for instance, in the Stour, at Canterbury. And if the grayling be an imported fish, it is wonderful that it should not be found in the rivers in Kent, and along the south-west coast of England,—as in Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, -where the monastic establishments were numerous; and why it should be found in some rivers in the mountainous parts of Wales-as in that near Llan-wrted and the Dee; not near Val Crusis Abbey, but fif

teen miles higher up, between Corwen and Bala.

POIET.-It may have been a fish imported from the continent, and carried to a number of rivers, only a few of which may have suited its habits, and there it has remained and multiplied.

HAL.-There may be truth in what you are now imagining, for the grayling requires a number of circumstances in a river to enable it to multiply.

POIET. What circumstances are these? HAL.-A temperature in the water which must be moderate-neither too high nor too low. Grayling are never found in streams that run from glaciers-at least near their source; and they are killed by cold or heat. I once put some grayling from the Teme, in September, with some trout, into a confined water, rising from a spring in the yard at Downton; the grayling all died, but the trout lived. And in the hot summer of 1825, great numbers of large grayling died in the Avon, below Ringwood, without doubt killed by the heat in July.

POIET.-But I have heard of grayling