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performed by themselves. But we must say 

 that we have hundreds of times, with the finest 

 tackle ever knotted together, and the best flies 

 that human fingers could dress, tried the 

 method of fishing in dead still water, recom- 

 mended by them, and we never in any single 

 instance found it attended even with the 

 shadow of success. Fish then, impartial 

 reader, after both fashions, for trial' sake, and 

 for your own satisfaction, and inform us at the 

 end of the season whether you have killed 

 more fish in " dead still water" in a " deep, 

 dead part of the river, when there is no wind 

 and when the sun is hot" or in streams, 

 eddies, and curls, and in deeps, when the wind, 

 piping on them, has made them alive, and the 

 lowering clouds have stripped them of their 

 transparency. We will stake our reputation on 

 your judgment. 



We will conclude this chapter which we 

 fancy a tolerably complete one on the gray- 

 ling, by giving a short extract from the common 

 father of us all quaintly poetical Izaak Wal- 

 ton. It is a very fair specimen of the old gentle- 

 man's style, and not an unflattering portrait of 

 our pretty friend, the grayling. " The umber* 



* " The title of Umber appears to be derived from the 

 Latin Umbra, a shadow, which the rapidity of its motions 

 authorises, inasmuch as, when swimming, it darts with 



