GENERAL REMARKS. 3 
of hunger is taken off we require something gusta- 
tory—highly-spiced entrées, jellies, creams, ices, —and 
finally, to stimulate the jaded appetite, man’s original 
tempter, fruit, in which form and colour are called in to 
assist taste. 
To sum up the argument, therefore, I say that to 
“fish fine’—finer if possible than any one else on the 
same water—and to tickle the piscine palate to the 
utmost, is the most certain way of making the heaviest 
creel. As it has been well paraphrased :—“ Tell me 
what your tackle is, and I will tell you what your 
basket is.” 
Nor is it only as regards the basket that fine-fishing is 
to be commended: it is the only mode of killing fish 
that deserves the name of sport. To land a twenty 
pound Salmon or Pike by a single strand of gut, almost ° 
invisible as it cuts the water like a knife, is a performance 
to be proud of; to lure “from his dark haunt beneath 
the tangled roots,” the pampered monarch of the brook 
—to raise, strike, and steer him by a thread like gossamer 
through fifty perils by bank, bush, and scaur, and finally 
to lay the massive beauty gurgling on the ereen-sward 
with the microscopic hook still unshaken from his jaws, 
is a feat which taxes every nerve and the powers both of 
mind and body to accomplish. But what skill or 
pleasure either can there be in hauling out a miserable 
animal by sheer brute force, with a machine like a cart- 
rope and a clothes-prop? There is no “ law” shown to 
B 2 
