The Little Trout
A farmer friend told me that the little dream running at the end of one of his fields
used to have a large number of small trout in it, and I went down along the bank of the stream wondering what had killed the fish and taken life from the water since the far-off days when boys had tickled and wired the trout in that place. I came to the,conclusion that pro- greis had been responsible. The disinfectants used in shippons and dairies, the chemicals used for cleaning equipment and for washing the udders of cows, had gradually been too much for the fish. These things, and perhaps an extra dry summer when the pollution had concentrated ,in a few pools and puddles, it seemed to me, would be all that was needed to kill off the fish. They could never have been very big trout and it was most unlikely that anyone had ever cast a fly to them, but it was a saddening thought for me. I began • to study the ways of speckled beauties in just such a place, a meandering stream draining from a dozen little hills. How much I might have missed had the fish been poisoned before I discovered them.
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