336 Fishes as Food for Man 



touch of which he was master, has fully discoursed of the game- 

 and food-fishes of America with especial reference to the habits 

 and methods of capture of each. To these sources, to Jordan 

 and Evermann's " Food and Game Fishes of North America," 

 and to many other works of similar purport in other lands, the 

 reader is referred for an account of the economic and the 

 human side of fish and fisheries. 



Angling. It is no part of the purpose of this work to de- 

 scribe the methods or materials of angling, still less to sing its 

 praises as a means of physical or moral regeneration. We may 

 perhaps find room for a first and a last word on the subject; the 

 one the classic from the pen of the angler of the brooks of Staf- 

 fordshire, and the other the fresh expression of a Stanford stu- 

 dent setting out for streams such as Walton never knew, the 

 Purissima, the Stanislaus, or perchance his home streams, the 

 Provo or the Bear. 



" And let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a dead rod, 

 and laying night-hooks, are like putting money to use ; for they 

 both work for the owners when they do nothing but sleep, or 

 eat, or rejoice, as you know we have done this last hour, and 

 sat as quietly and as free from cares under this sycamore as 

 Virgil's Tityrus and his Melibceus did under their broad beech- 

 tree. No life, my honest scholar, no life so happy and so 

 pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the 

 lawyer is swallowed up with business and the statesman is pre- 

 venting or contriving plots, then we sit on the cowslip-banks, 

 hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness 

 as these silent silver streams which we now see glide so quietly 

 by us. Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as 

 Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, ' Doubtless God could have made 

 a better berry, but doubtless God never did' ; and so, if I might 

 be judge, ' God never made a more calm, quiet, innocent recrea- 

 tion than angling.' 



"I'll tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this primrose-bank, 

 and looked down these meadows, I thought of them as Charles 

 the Emperor did of Florence, 'That they were too pleasant to 

 be looked on but only on holidays.' 



"Gentle Izaak! He has been dead these many years, but 

 his disciples are still faithful. When the cares of business lie 



