BURIED TREASURE. 14?

a cloud of mud, which gradually spread itself all over

the fish stew. “ By Jove! keeper,” said I, “ he is a fine fellow.” “ Well, sir, he has been in here some time now; he was between 23 and 241bs. when he was put in, and I do not think he has wasted much. He feeds well upon large bait and little jack, and has killed lots of the miller’s young ducks. If they once get into the stew* the big jack will have them, and they will never quack again. There is a fellow jack to him down the river a little way, and we had him in the net once, but he went through it like a cobweb. They are very dainty, artful fellows, these big jack, and require a deal of catching; and the best bait for them would be another jack about three pounds weight, if you gentlemen could manage to spin with him. There are bigger jack than him though in the river, for last winter they found a jack among the weeds that weighed thirty-two pounds. He had a number of hooks in him broken short off. There was nobody that took notice of him, so they buried him in a dunghill.” Hearing this I nearly fainted in Pennell’s arms: the idea of burying a jack thirty-two pounds in weight, and wasting such a magnificent specimen! “ Show me his grave instantly,” said I. “ Where is the dunghill? I will soon have him up.” “ It’s no good, sir. He is all to bits by this time:

besides which, sir, you could never have touched him, the smell was terrible.” “ Smell,” said I. “ I know how to tackle a smell— Condy’s fluid is the stuff. Besides, what do I care for smell, when there is a chance of a good preparation? ” u I don’t want to excite you, sir,” said the keeper; u but we caught once in the net three jack that weighed fifty-three pounds; the keeper at, some six miles below, has got a jack in a pond that’s waiting till he i3 wanted for the house, close on twenty-three pounds, and he found a dead one last winter that was pretty nearly as big as that found in Mr. Bill’s water.” “ You have a good many jack in this stew sometimes, keeper?” “ Yes, we have, sir, and I will tell you a curious thing: One day I put in a jack that had a gorge-hook in him, for the gimp was just sticking out of his mouth. I did not take him again for six months, and when I came to look at him I could not find the hook at all. As I was cleaning him, something hard struck against the edge of the knife, and I found it was the gorge-hook that had worked itself right through him, and was nearly coming out. It was quite loose in the intestine, and did not seem to have injured the fish, for he was in good condition, and I know he fed while he was in the pond. I think the jack eat the eels in the summer time (there are plenty of them about); and as good a bait as

you can use for large jack is the tail of an eel, but it won’t spin very well by itself; you must cut about two inches of the head off, and sew it on to the tail part, and then it will spin beautifully, and you can fish with it all day without it’s tearing much. But hark! your friend Mr. Pennell, is crying for the gaff. We must be off, sir. Kun! it’s a good fish from the bend of the

rod.” Off* we both started as hard as we could go— the keeper going over a broad bridge, and I myself floundering, head-over-ears, bang into the muddy water and rushes of one of the water “ carriers,” and getting my first wetting for the season. “ It’s terribly hot,” said Pennell; “ how I envy those cows in the water! I have been a long way up-stream, and this is what I have got. I saw a beautiful quiet dyke, about five yards wide, and at the first cast I was delighted to see a huge wave issue from the side of the bank. Slacking the speed of my bait, I let him have it fairly, and struck him as he turned for his home; he made a gallant five minutes’ fight, and has left this 1 line cut ’ on my finger as a mark of his prowess. As I knew these big jack generally hunt in couples, I took another cast, and hooked an equally fine fellow, within two yards of the spot where I caught the first, but I unluckily lost him when at the last gasp for want of the gaff—which, by the way, I see sticking out of that

capacious pocket of yours. The fish I 1 now produce ’ ^as the Peeler says) will turn the scale at 91b. I found the sun very powerful, and my head would have ached considerably if I had not adopted my usual plan. I will tell you what you ought to do. Just get a handful of water-weeds out of the river, wet them and put them in the crown of your cap, it will make your head as cool as a cucumber.” “ Well, I suppose I must give you a wrinkle in return for this,” said I. “Do you know how to keep aWay midges and mosquitoes when you are fishing?” “ No, I do nofy” said P. “ Neither did I, till last night, when reading that delightful book, 1 Life in Normandy.’ I learnt that turpentine (I suppose spirit of turpentine is meant) will keep off all the midges in the parish. The author, a true sportsman, says: ‘ It is singular how little this is known. Many a man has suffered martyrdom when a single drop of this turpentine would have protected him as effectually as a coat of mail, and allowed him to enjoy a good day’s fishing.’ I for my part do not intend to forget this. If I were about to fish in a c midgy ’ locality, I should order the chemist to make up the turpentine in what we doctors call an 1 elegant formula,’ which he can easily do: and an ointment thus made can be agreeably spread on the skin of the face and

hands.”

“ What have you been doing all this while?” said P. “ Well, I have caught one jack, and I have been dissecting him nearly all the time; bnt I cannot make out what is the use of those curious blind holes (not the nostrils) that one finds all about his head; there must be some use in them or they would not be there, and I do not think anybody knows. Besides this, I have been considering how much the power of sight in the jack predominates over that of scent. The fish I caught must have seen my bait at least ten or twelve yards off, for I saw him start from his lair in the weeds, and he came at it like a rocket, almost pulling the rod out of my hand when he got it. He could not have smelt it, though he has nostrils. Depend upon it, a jack’s eye is like a telescope to his owner in the

water. “ Do you know that whales have a considerable power of smell? It is supposed to enable them to ascertain the whereabouts of the enormous masses of that minute gelatinous sea creature the Clio lorealis, on which they feed; whereas porpoises, which are rapacious in their habits, and do not hunt by scent, have the organs of smell but badly developed. As well as dissecting, I have been talking to an old man I met at the weir. He is the real original 4 oldest inhabitant ’ of the place, and he says he has been about the mill as man and boy all his life. He is now seventy-seven, his sister is

eighty-two, and her husband eighty-seven. This county must be very healthy, for in Fordingbridge churchyard, if you recollect, we found last Sunday after church, on four tombstones almost touching one another, the names of seven people whose united ages gave the total of 547 years, being an average of seventy-eight years each; the youngest was only seventy-one. Do you know what they do in the Isle of Wight? They make all the old people of the place go and sit at the doors of the cottages, and then point them out to visitors, making, in fact, an advertisement of them to cause invalids to come to reside in the village. I wonder the Fordingbridge people do not do the same. My old man’s reminiscences, being a miller, are of course all about the mill; and the principal fact in his life seems to be that he recollects when flour was 3s. 9 d. a gallon, and barley-flour half-a-that was in the war time; he says,crown a gallon—but moreover that he has seen out three of the Squire’s gamekeepers, and one of the parson’s, and that he is

still 4 healthful.’ u Besides all this, the old man has been showing me the eels in the eel trap by the weir; they are caught on the stage, and the miller says they get sometimes 10 cwt. of a night when they are on the run, and that the moment the moon comes out they cease to run. They are packed up in baskets called 4 flats,’ covered over with 4 spear,’ i. e. reeds, and sent away to Salisbury for Lon-

don. The price at the mill is 6d. per lb. in quantities* I wanted to buy some for our dinner, but I could not unless I bought 451b. weight, and don’t think we could manage this little lot at a sitting. I have, moreover, had an interview with the wild eels themselves in the river. I was trolling-with a dead bait, and thought 1 had a run, for the line went out famously, and then stopped all of a sudden. I waited a long time, watch in ‘ Punch’s ’ picture, and then thehand, like the man in keeper looked quietly over the bank to see what was going on. He reported that an eel had got hold of the bait, so I put the rod on the bank, and went to look myself. Sure enough, there were four or five large eels round the gorge-bait, which they were all worrying like a lot of hounds; they rushed fiercely at it, and then taking a bit in their mouths stretched themselves out at full length quite stiff, and twisted their bodies round and round with the velocity of a spinning jenny, till they had twisted a bit clean out. When one of them had got a mouthful, off he went among the weeds, and another eel took his turn. There seemed to be a whole colony of them under the roots of a willow, for they came out in regular succession one after the other, had a nip, and went back again to their hole. I watched them some time, and at last, when one fellow was in the midst of his gyrations, I twitched the bait suddenly out of the water. His teeth vrere so firmly fixed in the

bait, that I 'whisked him out on to the land, and fearfully astonished he seemed to be. The eels had taken every bit of the fish, all but the head, from the gorge-hook. The eel I whisked out was a snig. “ I see you mention and figure him in your 4 Angler- Naturalist,’ and this story will do for your new edition. Suppose we dissect him at once to see for ourselves the

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