VALUE OF THE SALMON. 23 



whole body in a net as when he finds a hook in his 

 mouth, the mere fact of resistance is no relevant proof 

 of suffering, and no adequate reason for compassion. 

 The resistance very probably proceeds from a mere 

 impatience of restraint, a love of liberty, which 

 should inspire, not pity, but respect and brotherly 

 sympathy, tending to draw him and us more closely 

 together. 



Finally, anglers, besides only killing fish in one way 

 that would otherwise require to be killed in another, 

 reduce the amount of killing in some other department, 

 and even in the fish department, and in the aggregate. 

 When people eat fish, they eat so much less flesh and fowl. 

 Therefore the proper way of calculating the results of an 

 angler's dealings with the animal creation is to reckon, 

 not merely the number of fish whose lives he may have 

 taken, but rather the number of fowls, lambs, sheep, and 

 oxen whose lives have, by his labours, been preserved. 

 Then arithmetic would fail to compute the amount of 

 insect life of which the angler is the preserver as well 

 as the avenger ; a small fish will take in a single day 

 more lives than a great angler will take in a whole season. 

 Further, compare the neatness and even agreeableness of 

 the angler's mode of operation with the hideousness and 

 brutality of those operations from the performance of 

 which he has, to so large an extent, exempted the butcher 

 and the poulterer the exhilarating struggle and friendly 

 knock on the head by the pleasant river-side, \vith the 

 felling, throat-cutting, and neck- wringing of the slaughter- 

 house and the pen- -and it becomes clear, to all but those 

 blind with an unwillingness to see, that the ways of the 



