e or
four hours of that day which witnesses the spiritless return of the
bearer of an empty basket.

The third species of Thames trout is of a more substantial kind, and
although as to its quality we may allow ourselves to be as enthusiastic
as the most hearty of Thames trout worshippers, we dare not blink at
the cruel fact that, as to quantity, it ranks far below the two other
species to which I have so charitably and gently referred.

What it may be to-day I know not, but in my time there was not a more
likely spot than Boveney Weir for one of these goodly Thames trout in
the flesh. From the sill over which the river churns into a splendid
mass of milky foam, past the island, and for a couple of hundred yards
down the water looks as much like the correct thing as any reach can
do. But even in fishing matters, perhaps in them more especially,
things are not always what they seem, and, reduced to the practical
test of results, Boveney Weir, in the estimation of many practical
anglers, is not now what it was, and decidedly not what it ought to be.
On the Saturday after a Good Friday, which fell in April, one of the
experts, as he worked a delicious little bleak in a most artistic
fashion down the middle of the weir, bemoaned himself in my hearing on
this account. Yet he could not complain. He had caught a trout on the
previous Monday. And it has come to this! A man who evidently
understands how to do it takes one fish in the course of a week, and,
being conscientious, admits that he will not sin by complaining.

In the course of an hour, four gentlemen, nicely equipped with spinning
rods, arrived at the scene of action, and paid out in the orthodox way
at the head of the weir. I could see that they had been having brave
sport with the above-mentioned species Number Two; but, so long as I
remained, that was the sum total of their spoil. One could almost
observe, by the gradual melancholy which settled upon their
countenances as the time went on with no thrilling rap to make the top
of the limber rod dance again, the hopeless fading out of these
unsubstantial specimens from even the imagination. The east wind of
course had been against everything ever since the trout season opened,
and it was not surprising to learn that; though the weir had been well
fished from All Fools' day onwards, only six fish had been taken, and
they of the smallest size.

A Thames trout of 2 1/2 lb. is regarded as a mere minnow by the