GENERAL REMARKS. 3 



of hunger is taken off we require something gusta- 

 tory — highly-spiced entrees, jellies, creams, ices, — and 

 finally, to stimulate the jaded appetite, man's original 

 tempter, fruit, in which form and colour are called in to 

 assist taste. 



To sum up the argument, therefore, I say that to 

 " fish fine" — finer if possible than any one else on the 

 same water — and to tickle the piscine palate to the 

 utmost, is the most certain way of making the heaviest 

 creel. As it has been well paraphrased : — " Tell me 

 what your tackle is, and I will tell you what your 

 basket is." 



Nor is it only as regards the basket that fine-fishing is 

 to be commended : it is the only mode of killing fish 

 that deserves the name of sport. To land a twenty 

 pound Salmon or Pike by a single strand of gut, almost 

 invisible as it cuts the water like a knife, is a performance 

 to be proud of ; to lure " from his dark haunt beneath 

 the tangled roots," the pampered monarch of the brook 

 — to raise, strike, and steer him by a thread like gossamer 

 through fifty perils by bank, bush, and scaur, and finally 

 to lay the massive beauty gurgling on the green-sward 

 with the microscopic hook still unshaken from his jaws, 

 is a feat which taxes every nerve and the powers both of 

 mind and body to accomplish. But what skill or 

 pleasure either can there be in hauling out a miserable 

 animal by sheer brute force, with a machine like a cart- 

 rope and a clothes-prop .^ There is no '' law" shown to 



B 2 



