probably the fishing Eagle or Osprey. A curious anecdote recorded by the author of "Wild Sports of the West," would intimate that victory does not always fall to the same side. "Some years since a herdsman, on a very sultry day in July, while looking for a missing sheep, observed an Eagle posted on a bank that overhung a pool. Presently the bird stooped and seized a Salmon, and a violent struggle ensued; when the herd reached the spot, he found the Eagle pulled under water by the strength of the fish, and the calmness of the day, joined to drenched plumage, rendered him unable to extricate himself. With a stone the peasant broke the Eagle's pinion, and actually secured the spoiler and his victim, for he found the Salmon dying in his grasp." A grey-haired peasant familiar with flood and field told the same writer that he had remarked the Eagles while engaged in fishing. They were wont to choose a small ford upon a rivulet, and, posted on either side, would wait patiently for the Salmon to pass over the shallows. Their watch was never fruitless;—many a Salmon he had seen, in its transit from the sea to the lake above the ford, suddenly transferred from its native element to the Eagle's wild aërie in the lofty cliff that beetles over the romantic waters of Glencullen.[1]
We shall close our notice of this interesting Family with a species scarcely less valued by anglers than the Salmon, the speckled Trout, (Salmo fario, Linn.), one of the most crafty, voracious, and swift of our fluviatile fishes.
According to Alexandre Dumas,[2] Trout are
