A WHIT-MONDAY FISHING.

MOUNTAIN, sea, and stream are the natural features which most invite tired men from town ; and for our part, we never could understand where lay the difficulty of choice. The human fancy which saw in every stream the intelligible form of a god, a nymph, or a saint, will not be lightly blamed. There are rivers in England to suit every

mood of man, and suggest every impulse, whether of melan- choly, merriment, or repose. But no one would consciously choose a sad stream as the scene of a sojourn, however short, upon its banks. The sight of the "full-fed river winding slow

By herds upon an endless plain, The ragged rims of thunder, brooding low, With shadow-streaks of rain,"

is apt to breed melancholy and depression, as it did in the Soul which owned the "Palace of Art." Nor do we love best, even as the companions of a day, those quiet, slumbrous streams which poets' fancies have ever painted as singing the lullaby

of sleepy gods, the

" Rivus aquEe Lethes, per quern cum muruiure labens Invitat somnos crepitantibus unda lapillis ;

the

"Rock-born flow of L-the's streams,

With muffled murmur of a thousand tongues Of tinkling pebbles soothing Somnus' dreams."

Merriment, not repose, is the best and brightest gift of the young summer ; and we must seek it, not by the solemn rivers of the plain, or by the dropping springs of the rocks, but by the brooks that come dancing down from the hills, and over- run in a thousand tiny channels the sloping meadows of Somerset or Devon.

There are thousands of such rivulets in the West Country, not brown and peaty, like the becks of Yorkshire or the burns of Scotland, nor white and glassy, like the Hampshire chalk-streams, but honest little home-spun brooks without a history, though rarely lacking a name, some running through the homesteads of the upland farms, some filling the fish- ponds of the old manor-houses, others mere channels in the broken faces of the hills. But whatever the nature of their upper course, all are alike controlled at last by the ingenious Western farmer, and carried along the ridges of the combs in a network of terraced rivulets, by a system of engineering which tradition has made almost perfect for its purpose, until they reunite at last, and rush through the wooded bottoms to the waiting sea. In early summer, these water-meadows are the chosen resort of every form of wild life in the neighbour- hood. The leverets come down to nibble the rich grass at night, and play along the sides of the tiny dykes ; and in the early morning the cock-pheasants slip out from the covers to drink and feed. The peewits are tamer there than on the hills above, and the woodpigeons, rooks, and jackdaws bathe in the shallows, and leave their broken feathers and footmarks on the soft mud. Big trout leave the main stream and slip into the cuts, where they grow fat on the grubs and insects which abound in their rank margins, and little trout, and even young salmon, force their way up to the upper waters, until they reach the utmost sources of the stream.

Owners of the ancient fish-ponds once attached to every house of consideration in the country-side, remembering the old saying that an acre of water is worth four acres of land, often take advantage of the chance offered by the subdivision of these streams to restock their borne waters with young and lively trout ; and if the streams are not too high, a '• Whit-

Monday fishing" with this object will convince the most saeptical visitor that the fun and merriment of the good old days" in the country have by no means passed away, and that master and man may still unite in the common pursuit of sport and amusement. For sport it is, though catching, not killing, be the object, and the quarry only lively little brook-trout, and eels, and lamperns, destined, however, to grow strong and lusty fish in the fat waters of the manor pond. Nor need the Hampshire fly-fisher share the feelings of re- sentment which the writer once saw excited by the simple narrative of a method of taking trout in the water-meadows, given by an Andover rustic : "When us sees a big 'un, us shuts down the sluice ; and then us runs he up and down until he be that blowed he can't a-move ; and then us gropples he." For the "fishing" entails hard and enduring toil before the trout can be transferred from the brook to the mighty tub on the cart which waits to carry them to their new home. Such, at least, was the experience of the last occasion of the kind in which the writer assisted.

The spot selected lay in a wood, at a point where the brook divided for some distance into two streams,—the one, straight, deep, and rapid ; the other, a succession of small pools, joined by miniature "cataracts," in which the water danced down from pool to pool over lumps of brown flint and chalcedony. Early in the morning, the men—for this is no boys' work —had dammed the last stream at the fork, and turned most of the water down the straight channel ; and when we tramped through the squashy meadows, and the thick growth of wood-elder, wake-robin, wild garlic, and blue and pink comfrey in the wood, to join the workers, the chain of pools was only connected by an inch of trickling water. But the instinct by which fish detect and follow the first warning of scarcity, had already caused them to withdraw to the deepest holes and hollows, and even the groping of a practised hand under the banks detected no sign of a trout. No one who has not tried to empty it, would believe the quantity of water which a small pool holds. When a dam of turf cut from the banks has been thrown across, to prevent the waters below running back as the surface sinks, two men step into the pool, and rapidly and steadily, like machines, fling the water forward and over it, until the sweat rolls from their foreheads, and we volunteer to take their places. Stepping into the cool water, we do our best to imitate the mechanical swing and cast of the practised hands, until the pails strike the bottom, and only a few gallons remain. Then, as we grope in among the rocks and stones, the water seems alive with fish, and the excitement grows. Half-a-dozen pairs of hands are busy feeling among the slippery roots and hovers, and shouts of laughter rise, as the nimble trout spring from the grasping fingers, or are held and carried full-speed across the brambles and under- growth to the tub. Nothing could exceed the beauty of these small brook-trout, streaked with yellow, olive, and silver, and studded with vermilion spots, and showing their contempt for the temporary discomfort of their capture by a violent jump and fling of their tail as they drop from the hands of their muddy captor into the clean water of the tub. But the trout, though the main object of the foray, are not the only denizens of the pool. Eels and lampreys and the odd little "miller's-thumbs" abound, and the pursuit of the eels is an endless source of laughter and mishap. A big yellow eel slips through half-a-dozen pairs of hands, writhing round and under rocks, in and out of the tree-roots from which the water has worn the soil, and back into the deepest hole left in the pool. "Drat he !" exclaims an old labourer, looking at his bruised knuckles, "he be so nimble as a little pig," citing appro- priately the most difficult creature to catch—next to an eel— in his experience. But at last the trout and ,-els are all caught, and nothing left in the pool but the "miller's-thumbs," or "bull-heads," and certain tiny and game-like little fish, which we suspect to be, not troutlets, but young salmon. In the larger pools which hold the finest trout, it is often impos- sible to throw away enough water to make the capture certain. In a similar enterprise in a different part of Somer. setshire, at which the writer assisted, a number of fine trout took refuge in a deep hole under the bank, where the tips of their tails only would be reached by the hands stretched to the utmost limit which the water allowed.. One of the party, fired by the enthusiasm of the moment, divested himself of all raiment, and lying down in the water, drew out, one by one,

the reluctant fish. Meantime, the " water " became a thin red paste, deeply coloured by the red marl of the district, and when the successful bather emerged, he stood like an interesting example of terra-cotta statuary, until a dip in the mill-pool enabled him to resume his costume.

The closing scene of the " fishing " was a swan-bunt, in order to capture and shut up the royal birds, which would have given little law to the young trout when turned, tired and bewildered, into the strange waters of the manor ponds ; and it was not until after much manceuvring and strategy, that the swans were driven from the water, and shut up, hissing and indignant, in the pen which is reserved for such occasions. But the fish soon become accustomed to the spacious waters of their new home, and there thrive and grow fat, until they fall victims to the rod, and form not the least welcome of the "kindly fruits of the earth" which a well- managed manor provides for its owner's table.