PURPLE HERON. 131
fly-fishing book will be allowed to bear out the assertion just made:
—'1848. Lowthorpe, July 20th., nineteen brace; put in one brace
and a half.' 'September 9th., seventeen brace and a half; put in.five
brace; the rest weighed twenty-two pounds.' '18-19. June 18th.,
twenty-one brace; put in twelve brace: of the rest, two weighed two
pounds one ounce each; two two pounds all but one ounce each;
and the next two three pounds between them.' '1851. June 16th.,
seventeen brace; put in nine brace.' 'October 1st., eleven brace and
a half; put in eight brace.' '1853. August 2nd., thirteen brace and
a half; one fish caught with an artificial minnow: put in two brace
andj a half.' ' August 26th., eight brace; put in one brace and a
half: the largest weighed three pounds all but two ounces; the next
three pounds all but three ounces and a half; the next one pound
and three quarters.* 'September 30th.. thirteen brace and a half; put
in seven^bracc.'
I think that even a Heron himself would have been satisfied with
equal success. I have been for the most part in the habit of using
a rod and flies of my own making. There is an idea abroad, if I
may for one more moment digress, that salmon-fishing is a much more
difficult species of the art than trout-fishing; but this is altogether a
mistake: a good fly-fisher is, if he likes, a good salmon-fisher. A fewyears
since I stayed a fortnight with some friends at Kelso, on~ their
return from a tour in Scotland, and, for the first time in my life,
went out salmon-fishing in the Tweed almost every day; and, with
the exception of one day, when I only took a large sea trout, had
not a blank day, nor ever lost a fish that I had once hooked; though
on one occasion the reel, or pirn, to speak Scots, was out of order.
But this is wandering a long way from the quiet trout stream at
Lowthorpe, where I hope to have a day or two yet for years to
come, if spared.—'Flow on thou shining river!'
One near Loudon. In Cornwall one, which alighted on a fishingboat,
two or three leagues from the coast; and another in the parish
of St. Burians, near the Land's End, in April, 1800. An example
of this species was shot near Killiou House, the scat of W. Daubur,
Esq., but whether this is the same as the one j u s t previously mentioned
I do not know. In Devonshire one, near Plymouth, in February,
1839; several others since, one on the Tamar, in October, 1857. In
Suffolk one, some time in the month of November, 1835, obtained
on the borders of a large piece of water, known by the name of King'sfleet,
near the mouth of the Woodbridgc river. In Sussex one, an
immature bird, at Catsfield, in October, 1851. Two others also in
the same county.
I n Ireland one was obtained. In Scotland in Oaithnesshirc.