PREFACE 



The framework of this book was put together 

 in the year 1915, the building of it being to a 

 great extent a distraction from the stresses of 

 war. For various reasons the book could not be 

 completed till last year, when many changes had 

 come about. So speedily, however, do things 

 move nowadays that it now goes out into a world 

 which is vastly different, not only from the world 

 of 1915, but even from the world of a few months 

 ago, and I am in some doubt whether it should not 

 have contained an appendix of trout-fishing econo- 

 mics — ^the wonderful prices achieved by split-cane 

 rods, the kaleidoscopic changes in the o^vnership of 

 lands and the waters thereof, the ridiculous new 

 position of sixpence, the inadequate size of fishing 

 inns, the dearth of trout for restocking, and so on. 



But I have decided that worthy handling of 

 some of these interesting phenomena is beyond 

 me, while others will receive adjustment at the 

 hands of time and so do not call for special con- 

 sideration. Flence I add no appendix. 



The world, by the signs of the day, is turning, 

 or being turned, upside down, and in a few years 

 we may all be at the Antipodes of our former 

 states, as old Sir Thomas Browne might have said. 

 But it is some comfort to me that the real Anti- 

 podes are now very well furnished with trout. 



