2 PRAISE OF FLY-FISHING. 



the scent, that one of the leaders of the pack was 

 very purblind, and could not see a float or a fly 

 upon the water, or a fish in it ; and that the other, 

 when he designated Izaak Walton a " quaint, 

 old cruel coxcomb," was thinking of the minute 

 and complacent manner in which the threading of 

 a worm, or the impaling of a frog on the hook, is 

 taught in " The Complete Angler, or Contempla- 

 tive Man's Eecreation." The poet made the 

 amende honor able to Anglers, when the harmless- 

 ness and charms of fly-fishing were explained to 

 him, and the great common-sense moralist would 

 have done the same, if he had read with genial 

 attention the poem of one he justly denominated 

 " a soft and civil companion." I allude to the 

 poet Gay's ^' Rural Sports," in which will be 

 found a pretty description of fly-fishing. jS^ow, 

 I shall have no apology to make in behalf of the 

 branch of the angling art in these pages attempted 

 to be taught, for in the practice of it nothing is 

 tortured as a bait — neither worm, insect, nor any 

 other living thing, the lowest or least sensitive 

 in the scale of creation. 



In praise of fly-fishing I shall have to write — 

 I cannot refrain from doing so. Fly-fishing for 

 salmon I have, recently, very acutely and abun- 

 dantly enjoyed ; so much so, that when my mind 



