FRANCE AND BELGIUM. 171 



practices are in force, and where no intolerable exclusive- 

 ness in matters of this sort is suffered to prevail, fish 

 abound in astonishing quantities, and are said to be on 

 the increase. Anglers are thus encouraged to exercise 

 their harmless art, and a taste for simple and innocent 

 pleasures is thus engendered and promoted amongst the 

 population at large ; but all poaching practices, all 

 illegal netting, such as dragging waters in the spawning 

 season, and using nets with a mesh through which a 

 cholera stricken shrimp could scarcely squeeze himself, 

 etc., etc. are inexorably prohibited by the law, and on 

 detection, are visited with very severe penalties.* In 

 England, the " gentle craft," is too often scoffed at, and 

 ridiculed; the pretensions and pursuits of the wandering 

 angler are treated with contempt; the waters of any value, 

 are strictly shut against him, lest he should tempt a single 

 fish out of the stream : and yet, the very best open rivers 

 J n the country are poached in every possible way; night- 

 lines garnish every bank ; illegal nets are constantly used 

 in the broad face of day ; in the fence months, when nature 

 loudly proclaims that fish should be let alone, they are 

 dragged from the streams without let or hinderance, and 

 an idle, vagabond, marauding, sheep-stealing population, 

 is thus created and fostered in every district in the king- 

 dom. By the glaring and most impolitic inattention to 

 the old salutary laws which we believe are still in exis- 

 tence with reference to this subject, and the substitution 



* It is however to be regretted that the mayors of the diff- 

 erent villages in some districts, who for the most part are 

 small farmers, are not sufficiently strict in enforcing the laws 

 on this point ; and consequently abundance of trout are caught 

 in the spawning season, at times when the waters are disco- 

 loured by floods and rains, by the neighbouring peasantry. 

 The law however is not to blame. 



