14 ANGLING IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



mused I. " As if he climbed the hillside to catch trout in 

 the thread-like trickle ! " 



The old names by which the pastime of angling is 

 known are, it wall be noticed, significant on this head. It 

 is " The Gentle Craft," and " The Contemplative Man's 

 Recreation." To be sure, there are plenty of anglers of 

 all ranks who are pot-hunters pure and simple. They 

 take their surly way to the water, doggedly settle down to 

 slay, and are deaf and blind to the compensations which 

 Nature, in her kindlier mood, offers against that too 

 frequent ill-luck for which the angler in Great Britain, 

 in Greater Britain, and all the world over, must be pre- 

 pared. But the rule is otherwise ; the majority of anglers 

 in this country, at all events, do take appreciative note of 

 the scenery ; do keep a friendly eye upon bird, beast, and 

 insect ; do delight in the foliage of the coppice, the whisper- 

 ing of the sedges, and the long gay procession of flowers, 

 even from the curious blossom of the coltsfoot, which is 

 probably the first to greet him in the earliest spring days, 

 to the yellow stars of the solitary ragwort, which shivers in 

 the late October days. 



It stands to reason that it should be so. Amongst out- 

 of-door sportsmen the angler is peculiar. The deer-stalker 

 has little to look at but barren hills misnamed a forest, or 

 the broad sky above him ; the fox-hunter has his horse 

 and his own neck to study, and the briskness of impetuous 

 advance to divert his thoughts ; the fowler's eye has a 

 definite duty to perform. The angler, if using a fly-rod, 

 has frequently-recurring " waits," what time he moves 

 from stream to stream ; the bottom-fisher, too, has a 

 superfluity of enforced leisure at his disposal. And over 

 and above all the British angler lives in a country whose 

 rural parts are unique in their winsomeness. Walton's 



