'For no one will eat him,' he well doth know.


However, as we have insides, and he has actually none, and what is
more strange, not even a mouth wherewith to fill the said insides, we
had better copy his brothers and sisters below whose insides are
still left, and settle with them upon the grass awhile beneath you
goodly elm.

Comfort yourself with a glass of sherry and a biscuit, and give the
keeper one, and likewise a cigar. He will value it at five times its
worth, not merely for the pleasure of it, but because it raises him
in the social scale. 'Any cad,' so he holds, 'smokes pipes; but a
good cigar is the mark of the quality,' and of them who 'keep company
with the quality,' as keepers do. He puts it in his hat-crown, to
smoke this evening in presence of his compeers at the public-house,
retires modestly ten yards, lies down on his back in a dry feeder,
under the shade of the long grass, and instantly falls fast asleep.
Poor fellow! he was up all last night in the covers, and will be
again to-night. Let him sleep while he may, and we will chat over
chalk-fishing.

The first thing, probably, on which you will be inclined to ask
questions, is the size of the fish in these streams. We have killed
this morning four fish averaging a pound weight each. All below that
weight we throw in, as is our rule here; but you may have remarked
that none of them exceeded half a pound; that they were almost all
about herring size. The smaller ones I believe to be year-old fish,
hatched last spring twelvemonth; the pound fish two-year-olds. At
what rate these last would have increased depends very much, I