The gravitating stops, I should not omit to mention, require to be kept very clean, as, with rust or dirt under them, they will not fall so readily, and thereby prevent the gun from going off. This I name as a caution to a slovenly shooter, and not as an imperfection in the plan.—Hawker.
Gray, s. White, with a mixture of black; white or hoary with old age; dark, like the opening or close of day.
Grey horses are of different shades, from the lightest silver to a dark iron grey. The silver grey reminds the observer of the palfrey, improved by an admixture of Arab blood. He does not often exceed fourteen hands and a half high, and is round carcassed—light legged—with oblique pasterns, calculated for a light carriage, or for a lady’s riding—seldom subject to disease—but not very fleet, or capable of hard work.
The iron grey is usually a larger horse; higher in the withers, deeper and thinner in the carcass, more angular in all his proportions, and in many cases a little too long in the legs. Some of these greys make good hackneys and hunters, and especially the Irish horses; but they are principally used for the carriage. They have more endurance than the flatness of the chest would promise; but their principal defect is their feet, which are liable to contraction, and yet that contraction is not so often accompanied by lameness as in many other horses.
The dappled grey is generally a handsomer and a better horse: all the angular points of the iron grey are filled up, and with that which not only adds to symmetry, but to use. Whether as a hackney, or, the larger variety, a carriage-horse, there are few better, especially since his form has been so materially improved, and so much of his heaviness got rid of by the free use of foreign blood. There are not, however, so many dappled greys as there used to be, since the bays have been bred with so much care. The dappled grey, if dark at first, generally retains his colour to old age.
Some of the greys approach to a nutmeg, or even bay colour. Many of these are handsome, and most of them are hardy.
Grayling, s. The umber, a fish.
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 Dawnton; 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.
The grayling lies deeper and is not so shy a fish as the trout; and, provided your link is fine, is not apt to be scared by the cast of flies on the water. The fineness of the link, and of the gut to which your flies are attached, is a most essential point, and the clearer the stream the finer should be the tackle. I have known good fishermen foiled by using a gut of ordinary thickness, though their flies were of the right size and colour. Very slender transparent gut of the colour of the water, is one of the most important causes of success in grayling fishing.