" Reader, did you ever throw the fly to tempt the silvery deni- 

 zen of the lake, or river, to his destruction ? Have you watched 

 him, as it skimmed like a living insect along the surface, dart 

 from his hiding-place, and rush upon the tempting but deceitful 

 morsel ; and have you noticed his astonishment when he found 

 the hook was in his jaw ? Have you watched him as he bent your 

 slender rod ' like a reed shaken by the wind,' in his efforts to free 

 himself, and then have you reeled him to your hand and de- 

 posited him in your basket, as the spoil of your good right arm ? 

 If you have not, leave the dull, monotonous, every-day things 

 around you, and flee to the Chazy Lake." S. H. Hammond. 



" I now come to not only the most sportsman-like, but the most 

 delightful method of trout-fishing. One not only endeared by a 

 thousand delightful memories, but by the devotion of many of our 

 wisest and best men for ages past ; and, next to my thanks for 

 existence, health, and daily bread, I thank God for the good gift 

 of fly-fishing. If the fishes are to be killed for our use, there is 

 no way in which they are put to so little pain as in fly-fishing. 

 The fish rises, takes your fly as though it were his ordinary 

 food ; the hook fixes in the hard gristly jaw, where there is little 

 or no sensation. After a few struggles he is hauled on shore, and 

 a tap on the head terminates his life ; and so slight is the pain or 

 alarm that he feels from the hook, that I have over and over 

 caught a trout, with the fly still in his mouth which he has broken 

 off in his struggles an hour or even half an hour previously. I 

 have seen fish that have thus broken off swim away with my fly 

 in their mouths and begin to rise at the natural fly again almost 

 directly." Francis Francis. 



" That is the sport, to throw the fly, and in half a minute take 

 it quickly out. Though the whole earth is given to the children 

 of men, none but we jolly fishers get the plums and raisins of it 

 by the rivers which run along the hills." Charles Kingdey. 



