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CHAPTER VII. 



A CURIOUS CONTROVERSY SHARPLY COMMENCED, 

 AND, IT IS HOPED, SUCCESSFULLY CONCLUDED. 



AT a time when the spirit of innovation is 

 considered as a sure proof of talent, it is not 

 wonderful that a startling heresy should have 

 been broached with respect to some of the 

 most established doctrines of angling. The 

 modern possessors of genius- and in this 

 precocious age of ours they are many disdain 

 in every art to wend their way along the old 

 and beaten roads, and will not condescend to 

 travel in the pursuit of knowledge, unless in 

 class 1st. of some rapid rail-road train. To 

 them our ancestors seem slow coaches in 

 every thing, and any thing that smells of rou- 

 tine strikes their nostrils with an odour quite 

 the reverse of savory. It seems, that since 

 the days of Charles Cotton that is, for the 

 space of two goodly centuries we, practised 

 anglers, have been plunged up to the neck and 

 ears in error. He thought it necessary, and 

 G 5 



