8 



which all-bountiful Nature seems to have 

 exerted herself with all the generous and 

 unsparing love, and disinterested and delicate 

 devotion, of maternity. 



Fly-fishing is exempt from the principal 

 drawbacks attendant on the other modes of 

 angling. In the first place, the charge of cruel- 

 ty cannot, with any justice, attach to it. The 

 fly-fisher* tortures no insect, no reptile, no 

 living animal, in pursuing his recreation. He 

 uses artificial baits ; and even the charge, that 

 the fish he kills is put to unnecessary tor- 

 ture, cannot be thoroughly substantiated. Sir 

 Humphrey Davy, a great authority on any 

 point that relates to the organisation of fishes, 

 says, and we entirely agree with him, that 

 " it cannot be doubted, that the nervous sys- 

 tem of fish, and cold-blooded animals in gene- 

 ral, is less sensitive than that of warm-blooded 

 animals. The hook usually is fixed in the 

 cartilaginous part of the mouth, where there 

 are no nerves ; and a proof, that the sufferings 

 of a hooked fish cannot be great, is found in 

 the circumstance, that though a trout has been 

 hooked and played for some minutes, he will 

 often, after his escape with the artificial-fly in 

 his mouth, take the natural fly, and feed as 

 if nothing had happened; having apparently 



* The artificial fly-fisher, of course, is meant. 



