260 APPENDIX. 



party of midnight lunatics. If he sees this he may 

 get the explanation he was then in too great a fright 



to wait for. 



SALMON NETS. 

 Page 220. 



The attention of Parliament has been chiefly 

 directed to close seasons and nets. First and 

 foremost, nets and paid engines (the angler's 

 aversion) nets in all forms, shapes, and sizes 

 nets half as long as Regent-street, and as deep 

 as the first-floor windows are high nets placed 

 across the rivers like the hurdles across the much- 

 worn paths in Hyde Park day nets, night nets, 

 and nets that fish by themselves day and night. 

 Imagine Rotten Row a salmon stream, the good 

 citizens salmon. Four P.M., the spate and the 

 fish running up, a great net is spread at the 

 three arches at Hyde Park-corner, another great 

 net from the statue to the Duke's house, nets 

 half way across the Row every fifty yards, and 

 every now and then a wall with nets in the gaps ; 

 add to this, fierce, and cunning ogres fishing for 

 us from the walk with rods and hooks baited with 

 devices the most tempting to our nature. How 

 many of us would get up to Kensington Gardens, 

 where, all collected there listening to the band, 

 suddenly from the tree- tops is let down a large 

 net, and the assembled crowd encircled with its 

 lethal meshes, and taken out like a net of cabbages 

 out of a kitchen boiler ; even suppose a few did es- 

 cape, and imagine the young fish coming down again 



