AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



THE SALMON. 



BY CHARLES HALLOCK. 



A CAREFUL review of the world's angling literature, 

 from first to last, throughout its one thousand titles, 

 more or less, in all texts and tongues, will be apt to 

 beget the conviction that, after all that has been written, the 

 gist of the subject was fairly covered by Dame Bernes, in 

 her "Book of St. Albans," four centuries ago. Little in 

 essence has been added which did not come within the scope 

 of her speculative observation, whether it be technical, ethical, 

 physical, metaphysical, logical, biological, or theological. If 

 fish-lore has extended or developed since then in any direc- 

 tion, it has been more in the line of scientific essay than in 

 homily, poetry, or mechanics more in respect to distribu- 

 tion, nomenclature, and classification, than in the "disporte 

 of fysshygne." It is quite probable that the Macedonians 

 tossed the "hippurus" before the Christian era with the same 

 "delicacy and accuracy" which experts exhibit at modern fly- 

 casting tournaments, and that angling, pure and simple, took 

 high rank with the artistic expression of that remote but 

 classic age. The lesson was thoroughly inculcated then; its 

 application and improvement came subsequently. These took 

 shape in Walton's time, and have gradually developed into 

 the latter-day perfection of angling literature and art the 

 long interim having been singularly punctured by alternate 



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