INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



To DEAL with a subject so wide as the Fish and Fishing of an 

 extent of country greater than the whole of Em-ope, stretching almost 

 from the Arctic circle to the Tropics, from the waters of the Atlantic 

 to those of the Pacific Ocean, may seem, and indeed is, in some 

 respects, a bold and presumptuous undertaking. It were so altogether, 

 did I pretend to enter into the natural history of all, or even of one- 

 hundredth part, of the fish peculiar to this continent and its adjacent 



seas. 



Such, however, is by no means my aim or intention. I write for 

 the sportsman, and it is therefore with the sporting-fish only that I 

 propose to deal ; as, in a recent work on the Field Sports of the same 

 regions, it was with the game animals only that I had to do. In the 

 prefatory observations of that work, I endeavored to make myself 

 understood as to what constitutes game, in my humble opinion, as 

 regards animals of fur and feather. I did not, it is true, expect, or 

 even hope, to suit the views and notions of everybody, partieularly 

 when I looked to the great variety of soils, regions, and climates, for 

 the inhabitants of which I was writing ; and to the extreme latitude 

 and laxity of ideas concerning sportsmanship which prevail in this 



country. 



One would suppose it was sufficiently evident, that a work of the 



