NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[Under this Department Heading queries relative to Angling, Ichthyology and Fish Culture 
will be answered. | 
Angling as a Cosmopolitan Sport. 
Englishmen are born sportsmen. ‘They are 
what is termed ‘all round sportmen,”’ for there 
is no department of outdoor recreation in 
which they do not indulge and, in many in- 
stances, excel. Itis a part of their education, 
which, if neglected in their younger days, is 
apt to be cultivated, assiduously, when man- 
hood is reached, for an Englishmen who does 
not care to shoot or fish, or has neglected his 
opportunities to acquire the art to do so, finds 
himself outclassed, as it were, in his social in- 
tercourse with his comrades, and a sort of un- 
intentional ostracism is apt to occur. He is 
out of gear with his fellows. This love of 
outdoor sport is most forcibly denionstrated 
in Great Britain by the anglers of that country. 
It is with them a national pastime, indulged 
in by nearly every man who can buy a fish 
hook and take a day off. It matters not to 
most of them what the quarry may chance to 
be, the tiny gudgeon of a few inches will en- 
thuse the most skilled of them, and their 
““peg down matches,’ wherein a public con- 
test for a few fish, of a few ounces weight, will 
gather an enthusiastic crowd of patient and all- 
ending rodsters. The love of angling per- 
vades the entire people, and the result natur- 
ally occurs that in England may be found, not 
only the most ardent, but the most skilled of 
Waltonians. It is in the United Kingdom that 
the higher classes lead the middle and lower 
grades in the lines of recreation, and among 
the nobility may be found the most enthusias- 
tic and expert of the craft. But it is not only 
in the practical use of angling gear that the 
British angler excels; he is an earnest student 
of the literature of the art, practical and his- 
torical. Scarcely a day passes, certainly not 
a month, that a book on fishing is not issued 
from the British press. It may be a modest 
booklet or a pretentious tome, but both alike 
are bought freely, read exhaustively, and sub- 
jected to the test of criticism as to their prac- 
tical value to the fraternity. Hence, we can- 
not wonder that the English angler is the 
highest type of the craft, despite the fact that 
he is apt to split hairs over grades of construc- 
tion and the methods of using his angling 
gear. 
Stepping across the channel into France we 
find a reversed condition of things. The 
Frenchman is not a sportsman by nature or by 
education. His vivacious temperament delights 
more in the convivialities of general social in- 
tercourse, than in the pursuit of special recre- 
ations which might lead him away from his 
favorite sa/on, or his dear He has 
neither the taste nor the skill, born of heredity, 
to indulge in the sports of fishing or shooting, 
and when he drops a line in the generally un- 
fruitful waters of his native land, he is apt to 
handle his tackle like a plough boy, or land his 
quarry like a pot-fisher. Of course, excep- 
tions occur to this rule, but we doubt if there 
is in all France a hundred fishermen equalling 
those produced in like number by every shire 
in England. Again, the literature of the art 
possesses for the Frenchman but little attrac- 
tion. Their encyclopedias contain but few 
columns devoted to angling, nor do we find in 
their largest libraries any popular works of 
value, either description of the art or historical 
as to its literature, and what we do find is de- 
void of all enthusiasm as to the exhilarating 
effects of the pastime orits ennobling and 
health-giving quality. In fact fishing is, as a 
rule, relegated to the small boys who catch a 
species of gudgeon and some little sticklebacks 
in the fluvial waters of the country. Indeed, 
one of their writers on the art of angling orig- 
inated Johnson's slur by writing that the rod 
was an instrument with an imbecile at one 
end anda brute at the other. 
In Germany angling is not a national pas- 
time, although many of its best citizen element 
are followers of the art, but when we consider 
that the United States contains many thou- 
sands of enthusiastic, intelligent and gifted 
fishermen, who are of German parentage or 
extraction, we are forced to believe that the 
Paris. 
