16 SALMONID.E. 



wherever tlie salmon or the trout disports himself, there 

 Nature hkewise hfts up her voice and her hands in joyful 

 harmony and accord. The leaves dance to their own whis- 

 pered cadences ; the cascade leaj)S to the music of its fall ; 

 birds and insects take frequent wing; and the bounding 

 deer snuflFs the air, vital and laden witli woodland joerfumes. 

 Surely it is the leap that designates the salmon. Let us, 

 therefore, accord to him and all his royal family that he- 

 raldic device and motto which justly belong to their noble 

 line, and which have ever been recognized Avhcre Nature has 

 held her court — Salmo the Leaper ! 



Just here, upon the inspiration of the occasion and the 

 theme, it would be natural to give my pen an impromptu 

 flourish, and describing a graceful parabola over my shoul- 

 der, secundem artem, drop my line deftly into the swift cur- 

 rent of my subject, just where that salmon qDlashed but now. 

 I forbear only through fear of personal criticism from some 

 old sportsman whose hair is more gray than mine. Yet, as- 

 suredly a quarter of a century devoted to study of the gentle 

 art should exempt me from a charge of presumption in at- 

 tempting to instruct, or of egoism in simply narrating some 

 portion of manifold personal experiences, quorum ptars fui. 



It is now twenty-six years since I cast my first fly among 

 the green hills of Hampshire county, Massachusetts. I was 

 a stripling then, tall and active, with my young blood bound- 

 ing through every vein, and reveling in the full promise of 

 a hardy manhood. My whole time was passed out of doors. 

 I scorned a bed in the summer months. My home was a 

 tree-embowered shanty apart from the farm-house, and 

 crowning a knoll around whose base wound and tumbled a 

 most delectable trout-brook. Here was the primary school 

 where I learned the first rudiments of a sportsman's educa- 

 tion. In time I came to know every woodchuck hole in the 

 township, and almost every red squirrel and chipmunk by 

 sight; every log where an old cock-partridge drummed; 

 every crow's nest, and every hollow tree Avhere a coon hid 



