Hal.—Well, gentlemen, I hope you have been successful.
Poiet.—We have had good sport; but I have been for some time reposing on this bank, and admiring the scene below. How fine are these woods! How beautiful these banks! the hills in the distance approach to the character of mountains; and the precipitous cliff, which forms the summit of that distant elevation, looks like a diluvian monument, and as if it had been bared and torn by a deluge, which it had stemmed.
Hal.—It is one of the Clee hills, and its termination is basaltic, and such rocks usually assume such forms. But though this spot is beautiful, to-morrow, I hope to show you a more exquisite landscape,—cliffs and woods, and gushing waters, of a character still more romantic. We will return to our inn by a shorter road; but tell me, have you caught a large fish amongst you, and preserved him for crimping?
Poiet.—We have preserved two fishes in the barrel, but I fear they are much below your proposed size.
Hal.—They are good fish, and of the average size of the large grayling in this stream—16 inches long, and about 1½lb.; they will make a good variety boiled and placed in the middle of the fried fish. And how many have you caught altogether?
Poiet.—I have basketed (to coin a word) three trout and six grayling.
Phys.—And I have taken seven grayling. I caught trout likewise, but, not considering them in proper season, I returned them to the river: but Ornither has been the most successful—he has killed ten grayling.
Hal.—The trout is rarely good in this river—at least I never saw one that cut red, and yet I have taken them in July, when their external appearance was perfect and beautiful; but they have, to my taste, always a flabby and soft character of flesh, and at all seasons here are inferior for the table to grayling; yet they often attain a considerable size. There are few small fish in these streams, and I suppose the grayling, which are most numerous, deprive the trout of their proper share of the food, depending upon larvæ and flies.
Phys.—As we are walking through these meadows, pray give us some information as to the habits of the grayling, and its localities in England: I have been so much pleased with my sport, that I shall become, with St. Ambrose, a patron of the fish.
Hal.—The habits of the grayling, like those of most other fish, are very simple. He is, I believe, to a certain extent, gregarious—more so than the trout, and less so than the perch, and the usual varieties of the carp species known in England. His form and appearance you have seen. He is as yet scarcely in his highest or most perfect season, which is in the end of November or beginning of December, when his back is very dark, almost black, and his belly and lower fins are nearly gold-coloured; but his brightness, like that of most other fishes, depends a good deal upon the nature of the water: and on the continent I have seen fishes far more brilliantly coloured than in England—the lower part almost a bright orange, and the back fin approaching to the colour of the damask rose, or rather of an anemone. The grayling spawns in April, and sometimes as late as the beginning of May: the female is generally then followed by two or three males. She deposits her ova in the tales of sharp streams, and the males, rubbing against her, shed upon the ova the melt or semi-fluid. I do not know how long a time is required for the exclusion of the young ones; but in the end of July, or beginning of August, they are of the size of sprats, four or five inches long, and already sport merrily at a fly. Though I have often taken grayling in bad season, yet I have rarely observed upon them the same kind of leech,[[7]] or louse, which is so often found upon the trout; from which I infer, that they seldom hide themselves, or become torpid in the mud. The grayling hatched in May or June, I conclude, become the same year, in September or October, nine or ten inches long, and weigh from five ounces to half a pound; and the year after they are from twelve to fifteen inches long, and weigh from three-quarters to a pound; and these two sizes, as you have seen, are the fish that most usually rise at the fly. The first size in this river is called shote, which is a Celtic word, I believe, applied likewise in the west of England to small trout. Of their growth after the second year I cannot speak; this must depend much on their food and place of residence. Marsigli says, they do not grow after the third year, and at this age, in Austria, they are sometimes a cubit long; but though I have fished much in that country, I never saw any so long. If they are taken into new and comparatively still water recently made, and where food is plenty, they grow very fast: under these circumstances, I have seen them above 3lbs. In the Test, where, as I mentioned before, the grayling has been only recently introduced, they have sometimes been caught between 3 and 4lbs.—in this river I never took one above 2lbs. but I have heard of one being taken of 2½lbs. The grayling is a rare fish in England, and has never been found in Scotland and Ireland (as Poietes observed before;) and there are few rivers containing all the conditions necessary for their increase. I know of no grayling river farther west than the Avon, in Hampshire: they are found in some of the tributary streams of this river which rise in Wiltshire. I know of no river containing them on the north coast west of the Severn: there are very few only in the upper part of this river, and in the streams which form it in North Wales. There are a few in the Wye and its tributary streams. In the Lug, which flows through the next valley, in Herefordshire, many grayling are found. In the Dee, as I have said before, they are found, but are not common. In Derbyshire and Staffordshire, the Dove, the Wye, the Trent, and the Blithe, afford grayling; in Yorkshire, on the north coast, some of the tributary streams of the Ribble,—and in the south, the Ure, the Wharfe, the Humber, the Derwent, and the streams that form it, particularly the Rye. There may be some other localities of this fish unknown to me; but as I have fished much, and enquired much respecting the places where it is found, I think my information tolerably correct and complete.