26 THE BORDER ANGLER. 



victim. Angling re-awakens in him who practises it 

 the original faculties by which man gained his food 

 before he took to ploughing, or pettifogging, or cotton- 

 spinning ; and he must have re-acquired in a consi- 

 derable degree the power of exercising those faculties 

 before he can daily fill his basket with trout from the 

 Tweed or its tributaries. He must be able to unite in 

 himself the man of the time when the world's grey 

 fathers came forth from the Ark, after the fishes had 

 for a season had it all their own way over the deluged 

 earth — and who would doubtless have to take to fish- 

 ing for their food, until the corn grew, or the veal was 

 ready — with the man of the nineteenth century, who 

 moves about amongst whirring wheels or pores over 

 papers, and whose dinner is sure every day in the year, 

 without his knowing whence it comes. But as it may 

 perhaps be said that the praise of fishers and of fishing 

 has already been said and sung to a sufficient extent 

 by members of the fraternity, we had better pass on to 

 the more particular business before us. Our functions 

 are those of a guide rather than of an angling pre- 

 ceptor — Wilson, Stoddart, Younger, and Stewart, and 

 hosts of others, have described the mysteries of the art 

 as practised in Scotland, as well as they may be de- 

 scribed — and therefore our instructions shall be brief 



Fly-fishing, by general consent, stands first in the 

 angler's practice. It is the most elegant mode of fish- 

 ing — the simplest in respect of tackle (seeing that no 

 bait is needed), and in some measure the easiest — 

 and it is that which, taking the whole year into 

 account, is perhaps the most generally productive. 



