"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never can recapture
The first fine careless rapture."
On this sunny bank, in the first gleam of spring sunshine, may be noticed a sprightly little bird hopping along, glad to have completed his migration to our shore—the wheatear, which Tennyson aptly terms (if we read him aright) "the sea-blue bird of March." And later on, the cuckoo is first heard down this glade, gleefully "telling her name to all the hills," till June renders her hoarse, and the clear note becomes "Cuck-cuckoo! Cuck-cuck-cuckoo!" and endless is the harsh iteration if another of her family answer the challenge. Peering carefully round a thicket, too, may be seen the waterhen, proudly tempting her black brood to cross the stream for the first time; or haply a wild duck, that has sat on her eggs till the angler's foot almost touches her, flaps suddenly her wings, and skims under the overhanging alders. If the fisherman be an observant lover of nature, these and the like country sights and sounds will bring him great contentment even though he take no fish. And so speaks Dame Juliana Berners, in her "Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle"—one of the quaintest productions of early English literature:—"Atte the best he hath his holsom walk and merry at his ease, a swete ayre of the swete savoure of the meede flowres: that makyth hym hungry. He hereth the melodyous armony of fowles. He seeth the yonge swannes, heerons, duckes, cotes, and many other foules wyth theyr brodes. And yf the angler take fysshe, surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte."
Down this beck an artistic eye will find many a feast of colour. The keeper's cottage stands on a high bank; and a more charming domestic subject was never painted, even by Millais, than one which may be noticed there any day in August. His little girl, bare-headed and rosy-cheeked with the merriest of light-blue eyes, stands under a forest of sun-flowers, which spread their huge yellow discs above, while sunbeams break through and leave their gold on the little maiden's hair, and play round her, earnest, we will hope, of her future, as she drops a courtesy to the passing angler. A little farther on, the briony, with its brilliant berries, will festoon the grey trunk of its cherishing oak with a glory, in autumn, that cannot but charm the eye. The wild hyacinths of April are like a fold of blue sky that has descended upon the wooded hollows. In the thatch of the labourer's cottage is one deeply-set window, with a few tiles under it, on which lichens and moss have established a footing. It has just rained, and the contrast between their vivid greens and the brilliant red tiles is delicious. It is thus that much of the monotony inseparable from a dull country may be relieved, by judiciously educating the vision to find beauties where ordinary eyes see nothing unusual. The pensiveness of an angler's "sad pleasure" will be found agreeable leisure for this purpose.
The various animals again to be found down the Beck, and the intimate acquaintance which can be made with them in their native haunts, form by no means the least of its charms. It is wonderful how tame all wild creatures become, and how their characters expand to men, who, like Waterton and Thoreau, the American naturalist, take pains to gain their confidence. The water rats, timid enough when any other foot approaches, look with fearless friendship on the gentle angler. At his ease he may watch them perched on a raft of drifted sticks and weeds nibbling the arrowhead with the utmost composure, or swimming about like a miniature colony of beavers. It is cheering to reflect, when they are seen under such circumstances, that although the miller may owe them a grudge for undermining the banks of his dam, they are of all animals the most harmless to the farmer. He is too often, however, apt to confound them with the destructive pests of the granary, and (though they are really voles and not rats) to lump all together as vermin, and issue an edict of universal extermination accordingly. What a blessed day will it be for the lower animals when farmers imbibe a taste for natural history! At dusk may often be discerned down the Beck another innocent creature, the hedgehog, long remorselessly hunted down because vile calumnies had attached themselves to him of eating partridges' eggs and being addicted to sucking milk from cows. The latter accusation is simply an impossibility, while as to the former, we are afraid it is too true that he has a sneaking liking for eggs; but the damage he does is infinitesimally small, when not computed by gamekeepers' arithmetic. A pair of hedgehogs making love in their curiously awkward fashion, puffing and blowing like grampuses, is a strange sight; while the piglings, before their spines have grown, form the most amusing of pets. About the saddest spectacle that we ever witnessed was an old hedgehog that had been cut asunder by a train, at a railway crossing, while her brood of six or eight were still round her, unharmed and wondering what had happened. We transported the poor orphans to the nearest damp ditch and left them to the rough care of Mother Nature. Not very far from the Beck is a colony of badgers, an animal much persecuted where any linger in other parts of the country, but in this East Anglian shire acquiring a decided commercial value. Anything that will encourage foxes is here greatly in request, consequently badgers are deemed useful creatures in a cover, as they make earths which afterwards tempt Reynard to take possession. An angler is a subject of perpetual wonder to cows; but too often as he turns round from the water's edge in some rich meadow, he finds himself the centre towards which the curved fronts of two or three oxen converge uncomfortably close, literally placing him on the horns of a dilemma. The sleek heifers, however, approach him without any signs of attack or trepidation, and often run the risk of being caught as he rapidly draws his flies back for a cast. Tame ducks and water rats are frequently thus caught; but the most singular coincidence of this kind happened to a friend who, on going down the Otter to fish, had to cross a bridge. Whirling his flies over this as he passed, a swallow, darting underneath, took one and was captured. On his return in the evening he again whisked his flies over the bridge, and a bat, snapping at one under the arches, was taken in the same ignominious manner.
All this time, as is not uncommon with lovers of nature, we have lost sight of our main purpose in coming down the brook—fishing, to wit. The art boasts a long descent, according to Walton, the highest authority to whom a fisherman can bow. "Some say it is as ancient as Deucalion's flood; others that Belus, who was the first inventor of godly and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of angling," with much more to the same purport. It is a curious commentary on the aristocratic principles of the fifteenth century to find Dame Berners, in the aforementioned "Treatyse," confining the sport to the well-born. She could not imagine it a recreation of the multitude, or even of "ydle persones." With her it is emphatically "one of the dysportes that gentylmen use." Her enthusiasm for the sport knows no bounds, and must have made many generations of Englishmen anglers. The treatise evidently supplied the idea of "Walton's Angler," the book which next to "White's Selborne," has gone through more editions than any other secular work in the language. "It shall be to you a very pleasure to se the fayr bryght shynynge scalyd fysshes dysceyved by your crafty meanes, and drawen upon lande," she says; but, either fishermen have become less skilful since her days, or trout more timorous, if we may judge from her wonderful frontispiece of a man angling (and that successfully) with a rod like a flail, and tackle resembling the trace of a carriage.
Neither the salmon, monarch of the salmonidæ, nor the lovely grayling, which is only found in midland and Welsh waters, is to be expected in the Beck. Still the common river trout is no mean antagonist for an angler's mettle. Of all fish trout are most vigilant and suspicious; the least unwary movement, adventuring even a hand out of shelter or into bright sunshine, incautiously thrusting his head over the bank, or interfering in any way with the skyline, will certainly betray the angler. He may gain a slight advantage over their craft, however, by remembering that their habit is to feed with their heads to the stream. A beginner may rest assured that the golden secret of success in trout-fishing is to keep well out of the fishes' sight by availing himself of every natural cover, a tree-trunk, bush, &c., or by approaching the stream, if he is very much exposed, in a stooping position. He must, for the most part, learn, by observation, the many singular habits and characteristics of his quarry, and here it is that the old fisherman excels the tyro. The remarkable manner in which the fish's colours change with the nature of the stream in which it lives, is one of these curiosities of the trout. There is all the difference in the world between a fish taken from the chalky streams of Wilts and one that inhabits the dark peaty burns of Devon or South Wales, while both are inferior in beauty to the red-spotted lusty fish of a Nottinghamshire river. Internally they are of two types, one with red flaky flesh, like salmon, the other white; these variations, however, frequently run into each other. The practical fisherman only can appreciate the great diversity of activity which exists in fish of different sizes and streams, and probably in the same fish in the prime and end of the season. In one bickering rivulet the trout will all be vigorous and bold, leaping out of the water when hooked and dying hard, "game to the back-bone," in sporting phrase. In a sluggish brook the fish seem often to participate in its idiosyncracy, the larger ones tamely surrendering after a few monotonous struggles, the little trout diving to the bottom, and, like tench, hiding their heads in the mud. We have had to stir such fish up with the landing net before it was possible to do anything with them. Another curious fact is, that if a fish be taken out of a favourite hole, another will almost always be found to have replaced it the next day. Perhaps the most remarkable theory which has been advanced concerning the intelligence of trout is that of Sir H. Davy in "Salmonia," which he terms their "local memory." A brief outline may furnish one more subject of observation to the philosophic angler. Sir H. Davy asserts that if a trout be pricked with a fly (say a blue upright), and then escape, he will never rise again in the same pool to that particular fly while the surrounding circumstances are the same. Drive him, however, down to another hole, or wait till a flood has changed the aspect of his familiar haunt, and he will take it as greedily as a fish that has never experienced the deceit of an artificial fly. The associations of bank, stones, tree-trunks, &c., in his hole, act like visible mentors, and remind him, as the fly passes overhead, that it was when surrounded by their associations he was simple enough to rise to its fascinations. Solving such questions as these is one of the numerous secondary delights of fly-fishing. Another speculation which may be pointed out to anglers of an inquiring turn of mind, is to demonstrate why sluggish, muddy streams invariably produce better fish than the sparkling Devon or Welsh brooks. Thus in the Beck, down which our ideal fisherman is wandering, the largest fish which has been taken of late years weighed three pounds and a half, while trout of a pound and a half in weight are by no means uncommon. Three-quarters of a pound is a fair size for the fish of mountainous streams, while the majority of their trout do not exceed half a pound. Doubtless, the greater abundance of worms and ground bait in a muddy brook contributes to the larger size of its fish, but it certainly is not the sole cause of their superiority.
The flies which the modern angler imitates in fur and feathers, belong mostly to the families which entomology knows under the names of phrygancæ and ephemeræ. All anglers should know something of these curious tribes; and nowhere is a better account of them to be found than in that fascinating book, "Salmonia." The phrygancæ (the "stone-flies" of the angler) have long antennæ, with veined wings which fold over each other when closed. The eggs of the adult flies are laid on the leaves of willows or other trees which overhang the water. When they are hatched, the larvæ fall into the stream, collect a panoply of gravel, bits of stick, shell-fish, &c., to surround them, and after feeding for a time on aquatic plants, rise to the surface, burst their skins, and appear as perfect flies. The ephemeræ (or "May-flies") were noticed so long ago as Aristotle's time, in connection with the brevity of their life. They may be known by carrying their wings perpendicularly on their backs, and by several filaments or long bristles protruding from their tails. Their aqueous existence, like the stone-flies', sometimes lasts for two or three years; but as flies their life is thought never to exceed a few days in length, often but a few hours. In fact their life is, to all intents and purposes, over when their eggs are laid, and this function takes place directly they emerge into the winged state. Besides these, however, there are multitudes of nondescript flies used by those anglers who commit themselves to the persuasive powers of the fishing-tackle maker, and fill their fly-books with his gorgeously-coloured creations; but with the stone-flies, May-flies, and other simple flies previously enumerated, most real anglers are contented.
The greatest nuisance to the fisherman on the banks of the Beck are the hovering swarms of flies and gnats. Nature's profusion is almost inexhaustible in this division of her kingdom. In hot, sunny weather, they persecute the angler till he well-nigh gives up his sport, and betakes himself to moralize how his situation, lonely though it be, is no inapt type of a man's spiritual loneliness in the midst of that crowd of his fellows called Society,