2 THE SALMON. 



and by almost no nation more than this has that gift 

 been neglected and abused. The great nations of the 

 past, like Eome and Persia, longed to possess, the great 

 nations of the future, like Australia and New Zealand, 

 are labouring to obtain, what we have been carelessly 

 losing, or even wantonly destroying. When the patriotic 

 Fluellen, in his eagerness to establish a parallel between 

 Henry of Agincourt and "Alexander the Pig," not 

 content with alleging that there is a river in Macedon, 

 and "also, moreover," a river in Monmouth, ventured 

 to add that there were " salmons in both," he not only 

 belied the high testimonial he had given himself as " a 

 goot man in all particularities," but did injustice to the 

 rarity and value of a privilege intrusted, not altogether 

 worthily, to the now United Kingdom. For he was 

 entirely wrong in the particularity of there being, or ever 

 having been, " salmons" in the rivers of Macedon, or in- 

 deed in any of the waters that feed the Mediterranean, 

 a deprivation all the harder upon the natives of those 

 regions that, as appears pretty clearly from history, the 

 Macedonians centuries ago, appreciated and practised 

 the art of angling, being apparently one of the very few 

 nations that borrowed that important portion of civilisa- 

 tion from the Egyptians, who were the first, and perhaps 

 for many ages the only people, that " cast angles into 

 the brook." When Alexander, leaving salmonless Mace- 

 donia behind, led the way to the far East, he was un- 

 consciously going in the wrong direction ; for there are 

 no salmons in the Ganges either, and his "royal feast 

 for Persia won" must have been wretchedly defective in 

 its second course. More wise and fortunate was Csesar, 



