we saw several floats of wood on the surface of the water. We at once jumped to the conclusion that some poacher had been at work setting night lines, and with a laudable desire to frustrate his evil designs, we attempted to haul the supposed lines in. Fortunately for ourselves, we could not move the weight at the bottom, for the pieces of wood turned out to be the floats of the eel nets which are nightly set in the river by persons who make a regular trade of it, and whose take that night we might have spoiled. We did not guess what the floats were, however, until we came to a turn in the river, where, on the bank, a mysterious framework rose from the rushes, and there loomed against the olive sky the large circles of the eel nets which were hung up to dry.

The next day we sped before pleasant breeze swiftly up to Ranworth. We were to meet our friends at an inn on the banks of the adjacent Broad, and turning up a wide channel we ran between lofty reeds, between the stems of which the coots and water-hens swam and nodded their heads, and the reed-wren suspended its purse-like nest. We could see the Broad every now and then through narrow openings on our left, and as we seemed to be running parallel to it we conceived the idea of taking a short cut. Entering one of the narrow channels, we steered boldly for the open water, which appeared to be only a hundred yards off. The passage presently dwindled away,

Q*

and we found ourselves charging the reeds and forcing a passage through them. With the way we had on the boat, and the wind dead aft, it seemed as if we should succeed in our endeavour; and as we passed along, the reeds parted in front of us, and bowed down right and left with a steady rushing sound; but one of us was an ornithologist, and as we passed a small hillock, a bird like a landrail, but smaller, flew up. The lover of birds rushed frantically to the mast, and, loosing the halyard, let the sail down with a run, careless whether it went into the water, or the yard hit us on the head.

"It was a water-rail," was his excuse; " and there is its nest."

Sure enough, there its nest was, like a waterhen's in build, and containing four or five eggs, smaller and lighter in colour than a landrail's.

66

There, that is a prize. Never mind the wet sail; and I'll push you out with the oars, if you will hoist the sail."

That was all very well, but it took us a good half-hour ere we reached the blue water of the open Broad.

An hour afterwards we were moored in a bay of the river. There were four of us, so there was not much room for movement in the boat. We had a sack of grains as ground-bait, and we threw plenty of it in. Then we set to work, two of us with the old-fashioned red-worm, and the other two with a

paste coloured red with Judson's dye. One seemed to be as efficacious as the other, but a rather singular circumstance happened to one of the paste fishers. He was a very big, portly man, and he caught nothing but the smallest fish. While the rest of us were pulling out fine fellows of two and three pounds in weight, he continued catching tiny ones, not six inches long. He lost his temper somewhat at last, and it certainly was rather trying, especially as his companions were proficients in the art of chaff. Not a minute elapsed without one or other of us having a bite. And then, if it happened to be a good-sized fish, it was held at the top of the water, while a landing-net was slipped under it. Some of the larger ones gave a few vigorous dashes, but as a rule they gave but little play.

We had a cloth in which to hold the fish while we took the hook out; but notwithstanding this precaution, we were soon covered with the white, sticky slime which covers the bream as with a garment. We soon gave up counting the fish we caught; and we should scarcely be believed, out of Norfolk, if we gave the estimated number and weight we ultimately caught.

In itself, bream-fishing is the most unrcmantic kind of sport, but the surroundings gave it an adventitious charm. The river was broad and clear, the green flags and reeds bowed in the wind with a pleasant sighing; the great red valerian grew on the bank, and scented the air with its agreeable

odour; the snipe hung in the blue sky like a lark, and the sound of its " drumming" or "bleating" floated about us like the voice of a ventriloquist ; a hawk, probably a marsh-harrier, swept over us, stilling the song of the reed-wrens and the twitter of the bearded tits. Yachts glided by with all canvas set; wherries rushed past with the white foam spurting up at their bows, and their great sails flapped thunderously as they gybed or tacked at each twist of the river.

With all these sights and sounds about us, the fish biting merrily, the sun warm and the breeze cool, we enjoyed our bream-fishing amazingly, and felt sorry when the sun sank in the crimson west, and the river grew black in the gloaming.

One word of caution to the bream-fisher : moor your boat on the concave side of a bend, and not on the convex. The wherries are often compelled to "shave" the corners, or lose the wind, and tack; and it is a pity to give them the trouble and delay of doing this, for as a rule they do all they can to oblige the angler.

RAIN.

THE two great enemies of the angler are the east wind and the drought, and the latter is the worse of the two; for though the former makes the fish shy of biting, yet that is not so bad as having no water to fish in. When the rivers are low and clear, the salmon-fisher is in despair, and as his holiday slips away with day after day of dry weather, he begins to feel the most miserable man in creation. He knows that numbers of salmon are waiting in the estuary, or in the lower pools of the river, for the water to come down in a spate, so that they may make a straight run up to their spawning grounds, but nothing larger than a small parr can go up the fords, over which the water trickles in decreasing volume. And those fish that are in the pools, trout included, grow shy and suspicious, as their liberty is circumscribed by thenarrowing banks, and they are crowded against their fellows.

The trout-fisher has this advantage over the salmon-fisher he can seek out some shaded burn, and there practise the mode of fishing described in our paper "The Linn," a method which, however