10 THE GAME FISH OF NORTH AMERICA. 



the victims, but with the difficulty of the capture, and the degree 

 of skill, science, courage, or endurance, called forth in the act 

 of taking. 



Were this not so, shooting small birds baited with grain 

 about a barn-door during a snow-storm, or scooping mackerel 

 and herring out of their schuUs by buckets-full at a time, would 

 be a higher pursuit and better sport than shooting quail and 

 woodcock on the wing over well-broke dogs, or killing a thirty 

 pound Salmon with the slender gut and artificial fly. 



And so they are better sport to the schoolboys and snobs who 

 practise them, and who, lacking entirely the art, the energy, and 

 the perseverance necessary to success in the true Field Sports, 

 are perfectly content with arriving at the bad eminence of pot- 

 gunners and ground-fishers ; and then, presuming on their 

 paltry numerical success, affect to undervalue, as profitless, the 

 art which they cannot attain. 



It is the wariness, the subtlety, and the caution of the Salmon, 

 rendering it necessary to use materials of the slenderest and 

 most delicate nature, and to apply them with the utmost nicety, 

 which makes the triumph over him so far more enthralling to 

 the real fisherman than that over the Pickerel or Mascalonge of 

 equal weight, whose greater voracity and inferior intellect per- 

 mits the use of a gimp foot-length, and a silken or flaxen line, 

 instead of the fine gut tinctured to the very colour of the water, 

 and the casting-line of almost invisible minuteness. 



The same is the superiority of rod and reel fishing to the use 

 of the hand-line, whether in trolling or in deep-sea fishing; 

 because in both these the sport is at an end, so soon as the fish 

 is hooked ; it being a mere question of brute strength whether 



