286 MODERN TRACTICAL ANGLER. 



glittering in green and purple he tenderly woos the 

 object of his devotion, or armed cap-a-pie patrols, a 

 watchful sentinel, before her nuptial bower ; now he 

 fiercely disputes with rival claimants the possession of 

 some favourite " coign of vantage ;" or sheathed in 

 armour of proof and bristling with spines, charges, like a 

 Paladin of old, through the liquid plains in search of 

 other Sticklebacks as pugnacious and more penetrable 

 than himself. 



But now that my task is finished, I mUvSt not break 

 through the exclusively utilitarian part which in com- 

 mencing I imposed on myself It is hard, however — I have 

 often found it very hard — to separate the angler and the 

 ichthyologist, — not absolutely, of course, because ichthy- 

 ology in its broadest sense is the very basis of angling ; 

 but I mean in those branches of ichthyology which 

 embrace the nicer and less superficial habits and charac- 

 teristics of fish-life : in the beautiful, in short, as con- 

 trasted with the utilitarian. 



To such of my readers as I am not now addressing for 

 the first time, I need hardly say that I would have every 

 angler to be an ichthyologist ; a naturalist — that is, so 

 far at any rate as the creatures which form the objects of 

 his own pursuit are concerned. 



There are, I know, many little difficulties and draw- 

 backs which deter fishermen from the pursuit of Ich- 

 thyology, but these obstacles ^are not nearly so great as 



