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vantage over the other modes of angling, we 

 should prefer it, because it allows us a wide 

 range, and does not confine us to plain, hill, 

 or valley. As we said before, those streams 

 which most abound with fish that take the 

 fly, run through the most beautiful scenery, 

 and in themselves, on account of the obstruc- 

 tions they meet with in their course, and the 

 inequalities of the bed they flow over, present 

 all those changes of stream, rapid, reach, cas- 

 cade, and quiet pool, which contribute to form 

 that, to many, most beautiful object of inani- 

 mate nature a perfect river. The fly-fisher 

 following up his recreation, has a varied and 

 living panorama ever before him.* 



* The philosophical author of Salmonia elegantly says 

 on this point, with regard to fly-fishing, that, " as to its 

 poetical relations, it carries us into the most wild and 

 beautiful scenery of nature ; amongst the mountain lakes, 

 and the clear and lovely streams that gush from the 

 higher ranges of elevated hills, or that make their way 

 through the cavities of calcareous strata. How delightful 

 in the early spring, after the dull and tedious time of win- 

 ter, when the frosts disappear, and the sunshine warms 

 the earth and the waters, to wander forth by some clear 

 stream, to see the leaf bursting from the purple bud, to 

 scent the odours of the bank perfumed by the violet, and 

 enamelled, as it were, with the primrose and the daisy ; 

 to wander upon the fresh turf below the shade of trees, 

 whose bright blossoms are filled with the music of the bee ; 

 and on the surface of the waters to view the gaudy flies 

 sparkling like animated gems in the sunbeams, whilst the 

 bright and beautiful trout is watching them from below ; 

 to hear the twittering of the water birds, which, alarmed 



