also, of the pursuit may be another reason why additional consideration of angling could advantageously be given. The number of anglers is so vast and so continually increasing that it very appropriately now bears the title of a "national sport." With increasing numbers of anglers the scarcity of fish, although not appreciably becoming greater, undoubtedly does increase, and the education of the fish, combined with this scarcity, require greater finesse and more subtle means for their capture. Observations on these refinements are, therefore, not out of place. I shall endeavour in the course of the following pages to give notices of the latest of these, and the most effective, with various little inventions of my own, which have been put in practice in view of the increased skill required in the capture of our quarry.

It is customary at all entertainments to issue a programme of what is intended to be performed, and I will therefore follow so good an example. Briefly, I may say that, under the title I have chosen, separate con-. sideration is given to the following cognate subjects: The general history of angling, tackle and baits; ichthyology, or the science of fishes; nearly every fish inhabiting the fresh water, or migratory, in Great Britain, described in turn according to classification; and last, but not least, the art of tackle making is considered. Sea fishing may form the subject of another treatise at some future time. It will be observed that special attention is paid to the subject of ordinary tackle making, for, to my mind, one of the chief charms of successful angling is the reflection and knowledge that the fish captured are really and truly, solely and wholly so, by one's own appliances and skill, and thus the sense of possession is rendered doubly sweet. In treating also of each fish for the convenience of reference, the following divisions and subdivisions are observed: Natural history-including habitat, food, season, diseases, &c.-piscine folk lore, tackle, baits, and gastronomical, &c. Of course, notwithstanding the comprehensiveness of this syllabus, I am well aware that no book or treatise can alone make an angler. Hear what Saint Izaak Walton says on this point: "Now for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a man that was none to be an angler by a book; he that undertakes it shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales, that in a printed book called 'The Private School of Defence' undertook to teach the art of fencing, and was laughed at for his labour. Not but that many useful things might be observed out of that book, but that the art was not to be taught by words; nor is the art of angling." Indeed, some have gone to the length of applying the old maxim, Poeta nascitur, non fit, to the angler-an angler is born, not made, say they. I do not go quite so far as that, however, but fully believe that one ounce of practice is worth a bushel of theory.

Both are, nevertheless, good in their places. I ask the angler in all cases to prove by experiment, if possible, all that I try to teach by words.

After all this explanatory matter, which, albeit necessary, is eminently dry to the reader as it is to the writer, I come to touch upon a much more agreeable topic, viz., the position angling holds as a sport, and the reason why it exerts such a fascination over its votaries, for this comes properly under the heading "Introductory." To the initiated I am fully aware that a disquisition on this is unnecessary; but to the uninitiated, who have probably read or heard quoted Johnson's snarl about a worm at one end and a fool at the other," it is desirable to show succinctly why presumably sane men follow such an apparently inane, senseless occupation. Even Plutarch has spoken against it as a “filthy, base, illiberal employment, having neither wit nor perspicacity in it, nor worth the labour." Think of that, brother anglers! Let this man be anathema maranatha, likewise all others who rail against the most gentle of crafts!

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Man, and indeed all animals, seem to have an innate desire to hunt, i.e., to acquire by personal exertion. In the lower animals this desire is put in action primarily for the sake of the food it brings; in man, the hunting, whether of fish, flesh, or fowl, or good red herring, may exist, as in angling, without the desire for the food acquired. The exercise of all or any of man's powers or desires gives pleasure, and the fact that the desire to hunt in angling is accompanied in its exercise by the employment of more skilled and varied accomplishments and subtleties of manipulation than any other sport is the chief reason why so many practise it. That the influence of the spell is lasting is also demonstrated in the truth that few (none, I might say) give it up until the latest possible minute. The angler has the same undying steady affection as the litterateur is said to have for his profession. A hundred chances may deprive a man of his cricket, shooting, or hunting, but angling may be and is often pursued till the veteran “ goes over to the many." Indeed, instances of the ruling passion strong in death in connection with the gentle art are not wanting. Jesse, in his delightful "Angler's Rambles," says that the answer to the captor of a beautiful Thames trout, who had sent over to his friend to come and see it, was, that the friend was dying, but "that it would be a vast satisfaction to him if he could see the fish, provided it would not be injured by being conveyed to his house for that purpose." This wish was gratified, and Jesse remarks, "Mr. T. feasted his eyes upon it, and soon afterwards closed them for ever." This "ruling passion" has been very beautifully expressed by Mr. Westwood, in the "Newcastle Fishers' Garland" for 1863. He represents an old angler dying,

and desiring his son and daughter to place him in full view of the delightful river Coquet. This they do, and he says:

Now place my rod beside my hand

I live in days gone by:

I climb the steep, I move the deeps,

I throw the cunning fly.

Wild whirls my reel, full grows my creel,

Oh, son! oh, loving daughter!

In maddest dream was ever stream
Could match with Coquet's water?

And so on. I know myself of an angler who still wears beneath the weight of eighty-five years a young man's heart and spirits, which he says is due to seventy years of angling. I assure my readers I have drawn from his valuable experience in the succeeding chapters. Will these facts recommend the uninitiated to angling? for, like all true believers, I seek ever to proselytise. ?

The charm this species of amusement exerts over the angler must be powerful to afford such examples as those I have just quoted, and besides the general reason already given for this, there exists another hardly less considerable, and this may be sought for in a quality which most men possess, namely, a love of nature. This is splendidly explained in the oft-quoted passage from the Prioress of St. Albans, which I have rendered into modern English that the reader may the more readily read it, and which I beg leave to reproduce, it being, apart from its special reference to angling, a sweet pastoral prose poem. She says: "And yet at the least he hath his wholesome walk, and merry at his ease a sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead flowers, that maketh him hungry. He heareth the melodious harmony of fowls. He seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, coots, and many other fowls, with their broods, which to me seemeth better than all the noise of hounds, the blast of horns, and the cry of fowls, that hunters, falconers, and fowlers can make. And if the angler take fish surely there is no man merrier than he is in his spirit." Old Walton also teems with this love of natural music which so eloquently appeals to the angler's better nature, and which in the end becomes as familiar voices from whose soft fascination he cannot nor does he wish to break. Let my readers listen to a few words from him-Byron terms him a 'quaint old cruel coxcomb," with his accustomed sneer-and, after thinking over what they mean, and what I have above said, say whether there is any method or not in the angler's madness. Thus: "Look! under that broad beech tree I sat down when I was last this way a fishing. And the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to me to have a friendly contention with an echo whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree near the brow of that primrose hill. There I sat, viewing the silver streams glide silently

towards their centre, the tempestuous sea, yet sometimes opposed by rugged rocks and pebble stones which broke their waves and turned them into foam. And sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the green shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful sun. . . . As I sat thus these and other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content that I thought, as the poet had happily expressed it :

I was for that time lifted above earth,
And possessed joys not promised in my birth."

Was ever such a charming scene presented by poet or painter before or since? and to the sympathetic reader this quotation, of many others, unfolds the secret of the formation of the pleasant thraldom with which angling-not "pot hunting "-environs its disciples.

For, indeed, what can be more soothing to man's nature than the soft murmur of the breeze as it caresses the slender reeds or soughs gently through the rushes, kissing the slowly flowing stream and raising a smiling dimple of pleasure in the otherwise inanimate water? The artisan from the mill, though his hands be hard and horny, has a man's love of Nature; the tired business man, with his head hitherto full of shares, bonds, coupons, debentures, and what not; even the statesman, like Lucretius, "his mind half buried neath some weightier argument”—all are subdued by the tender force of unsophisticated Nature. But they must have had the angler's training to enjoy it. Who but an angler, having learned patience and accepted the gifts of contemplation-it is "the contemplative man's pastime "— could have written this passage anent the nightingale : "He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descents, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth and say, 'Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the souls in Heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth ?'"' Magnificent as is that ode on this bird-of one "whose name is writ in water," John Keats-no passage in it can compare to this simple piece of heart poesy. The charm of angling is not broken since this was

written.

Now, it may be asked, what special qualifications ought a would-be angler to possess in order to enjoy the pleasures so enthusiastically enumerated ? I answer that, inasmuch as that all men cannot be appreciative of Nature and her works, in the same way that all men cannot be poets, painters, or writers, so is it that all men who handle a rod cannot be recipients of the superlative pleasures derivable from

the gentle craft.

To be able to accept, and by an inward process to turn all natural examples of beneficence as furnished by our lakes and rivers and general natural scenery to the delectation of the intellectual and moral nature, in every case implies the true poetic faculty in its fullest fruition. Many are able to use it in its entirety. The best anglers I have ever met have been keen, intelligent men, of strong, sanguine, sensitive and eloquent natures, and possessed of that rare power of making the hand answer to the eye-intuitive judgment, and, chiefly, strong athletic bodies. This is my experience,

The gross picture of

and, as such, I think it will bear scrutiny. "Patience in a Punt," either under the broiling sun or bursting heavens, sans sport, sans cheerfulness, sans everything that makes life endurable, is the absolute opposite to the general truth. Under all circumstances the true angler is infinite in schemes and stratagems-" dodges" is the better term-is ever hopeful and watchful, spares no pains, and absorbs as a sponge does water the pleasaunce around him, his quick well balanced wrist and his clear eyesight can hook and play the fish and on the finest tackle land him. It is a miracle of fishing-to land a large fish on such a fragile thread that a half pound dead weight would break it. The Field reported the capture of a pike in its 'teens, brought to bank by an angler roach fishing with fine hair-this captor was an angler-hero.,

To show, in conclusion of a somewhat longer "introduction" than I at first intended, that there are large numbers of anglers who, in effect, feel and think as I have written, an interesting calculation has been made by Mr. Manley, in his book on "Fish and Fishing," on London angling, which I am sure he will allow me to reproduce. He says: "I gather that there are at the present time about eighty angling clubs or societies in the metropolitan districts, fifty-three of which are associated together under the name of the United London Anglers, and pay social visits in relation to the head centre. The fifty-three clubs have, in round numbers, 1700 members, and the other clubs 500, the very great majority of whom are small shopkeepers, mechanics, and working men. Of the same class there are at least 1000 regular anglers in the London districts who belong to no club. Further, it may be calculated that there are 500 more regular anglers who reside in the vicinity of the Thames and Lea. To these may be added 1000 at least of regular anglers of the upper classes, gentlemen, merchants, and large shopkeepers. These, added together, will give a grand total of 5000 persons who make angling their chief recreation in a moderately circumscribed area of which London is the centre." Now, these figures are certainly within the mark, and the estimate recently made in " The Country " journal that there are 50,000 anglers properly so called in England and