284 MODERN PRACTICAL ANGLER. 
glittering in green and purple he tenderly woos the 
object of his devotion, or armed caf-d-fie patrols, a 
watchful sentinel, before her nuptial bower; now he 
fiercely disputes with rival claimants the possession of 
some favourite “coign of vantage;’ or sheathed in 
armour of proof and bristling with spines, charges, like a 
Paladin of old, through the liquid plains in search of 
other Sticklebacks as pugnacious and more penetrable 
than himself. 
But now that my task is finished, I must not break 
through the exclusively utilitarian part which in com- 
mencing I imposed on myself. It is hard, however—I have 
often found it very hard—to separate the angler and the 
ichthyologist,—not absolutely, of course, because ichthy- 
ology in its broadest sense is the very basis of angling ; 
but I mean in those branches of ichthyology which 
embrace the nicer and less superficial habits and charac- 
teristics of fish-life: in the beautiful, in short, as con- 
trasted with the utilitarian. 
To such of my readers as Iam not now addressing for 
the first time, I need hardly say that I would have every 
angler to be an ichthyologist ; a naturalist—that is, so 
far at any rate as the creatures which form the objects of 
his own pursuit are concerned. 
There are, I know, many little difficulties and draw- 
backs which deter fishermen from the pursuit of Ich- 
thyology, but these obstacles are not nearly so great as 
