PLAN OF THE WORK. 



" FIELD SPORTS Angling seems the earliest of them 

 all, in the order of nature. There, the new breeched 

 urchin stands on the low bridge of the little bit burnie, 

 "and with crooked pin, baited with one unwrithing 

 ring of a dead worm, and attached to a yarn thread, 

 for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut, 

 his rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will 

 he stand during all his play hours, (as forgetful of his 

 primer as if the weary art of printing had never been 

 invented,) day after day, week after week, month after 

 month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart- 

 mind-and-soul-engrossing hope of some time or other 

 catching a minnow or beardie * !" 



And this is angling : a sport that requires as much 

 enthusiasm as poetry, as much patience as mathematics, 

 and as much caution as housebreaking. 



I could not be more than six or seven years old 

 when I sallied out one day to the river Ayr, with a 

 bent pin for a hook, as Christopher North has described 

 so graphically and well ; but instead of a minnow or 



(l) Christopher in his Sporting Jacket, Fytte the FjiSt.Black- 

 wood's Magazine, Sept. 1828, p. 274. 



