IRussel 549 



discussions, the jokes, the incidents of times like these, 

 the memory cherishes and gloats over through many 

 years, and especially through many dreary close-times 

 when multitudes of things doubtless much brighter and 

 less worthy to fade, have been forgotten or are 

 remembered but as wearinesses." 



And yet Russel elsewhere expresses his opinion that 

 trout-fishing has charms superior to those of salmon- 

 fishing. In " An Angling Saunter in Sutherlandshire," 

 the most delightful of all his writings, he says : 



" The joys of salmon-fishing who shall deny except 

 those that never tried them, and therefore have no 

 right to speak ? But nowhere are they the sole or 

 even chief joy of the true angler, and nowhere should 

 they be less so than in Sutherland. Trout-fishing is, 

 we boldly maintain, not only a more delightful amuse- 

 ment, but a higher art. A really good trout-fisher 

 that is, not a trout-fisher who can take trouts under 

 circumstances when anybody can take them, but who 

 can conquer the most perplexing difficulties, and circum- 

 vent the most sharpened instincts is a person of higher 

 accomplishment and greater merit than an equally good 

 salmon-fisher, somewhat in the same proportion that a 

 trout which knows every pebble in its haunt, and is 

 familiar with every kind of worm of the earth and 

 insect of the air, to say nothing of a ripened repugnance 

 to steel and feathers, is a better informed and more 

 sceptical fish than a salmon which has only left the 

 ocean a few days or hours, and is a stranger to every- 

 thing that comes before its eyes, or is offered to its 

 mouth. Some skill in handling implements is required 



