rHE rRours 



FROM the middle of the fifteenth century, 

 when Dame JuHanna Benners wrote and 

 printed the first book in the English lan- 

 guage on the subject of fishing, to the mid- 

 dle of the nineteenth, when the Father of American 

 angling, Thaddeus Norris, gave us his " American 

 Angler's Book," the fishes of the salmon family 

 have been looked upon as the most worthy by 

 anglers ; not, we think, entirely because of their 

 acknowledged game qualities, but partly from the 

 conditions under which they are captured and the 

 skilful methods and delicate tackle used in bring- 

 ing them to the net or gaff. 



The refining influences of the environment of 

 an angler, when on a mountain stream, may also 

 have much to do with placing these fish above the 

 plane of those of sluggish or even placid or purer 

 waters. Be this as it may, the trout has been, and 

 probably always will be, most eagerly sought by fly 

 fishermen, and they do not, now-a-days, have to 

 travel afar, particularly in New England, for owing 

 to proper planting, and the better observance of 



9S 



