LAKE AND POND FISHING. 129 



unaccountable in the eyes of the cooks, who are not aware of the 

 cause. 



Not only is it right to kill a trout before you bag or basket him, 

 on the score of mere humanity, but even for your own conve- 

 nience ; as the struggles of an expiring trout, particularly a large 

 one, which you may sensibly feel if you carry your own basket, is 

 by no means a pleasant sensation, and a sudden movement is apt to 

 startle a person of excitable nerves. The British Naturalist gives 

 rather a ludicrous account of the results produced by an alarm of 

 this kind to a learned Professor of one of the Scotch Universities, 

 who having one day succeeded in landing a very large trout, put 

 it alive into his basket, and as the day was favorable renewed the 

 pursuit with even more ardour than before ; but at length his hook 

 unfortunately got entangled in the bank which was rather steep, 

 covered with long grass and bushes, and contained the holes of 

 water rats, shrews, and as was understood otters. As he lay 

 along the bank, and stretched down to disentangle the hook, 

 the trout in the basket on his back gave a flutter, and the 

 belt of the basket came in contact with his neck. The idea 

 that lutra had him by the throat in vengeance for the inroad made 

 upon his mansion and preserve darted across the angler's mind ; 

 to escape from the foe he tried to start up, but position had given 

 his heels buoyancy, and he pitched somerset- wise into the water. 

 We are not, however, favoured with the name of the learned 

 Professor, yet T fancied that in that most talented elaborate and 

 facetious treatise on angling, " The Rod," I might have met with 

 something that might have enlightened me a little upon the 

 subject ; but I sought closely and in vain for it there : all we can 

 do therefore is to hope that the ducked angler did not belong to a 

 family subject to rheumatism, or that if he did he sustained no 

 serious attack of that disorder in consequence of his unlocked for 

 immersion. 



