CHAPTER III. 



NOTES ON ICHTHYOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF 

 FISHES. 



THE practical angler is all the more likely to obtain sport if 

 he understand thoroughly the habits of his quarry. Similarly other 

 sportsmen are more likely to be successful when they are possessed 

 of analogous knowledge. Of course when stating these platitudes I am 

 not about to draw the inference that technical knowledge is alone 

 sufficient. It is possible for a man to be able to enumerate the 

 characteristics of a far-off country, and yet were he deposited in its 

 midst by virtue of Aladdin's lamp or some other magical emigration 

 agency, he very probably would not recognise the land. In like manner 

 more than one learned pundit in piscine anatomy has never caught a 

 salmon, and only knows its habits in theory. It, therefore, is not 

 likely that a chapter on ichthyology will make a fishermaH, although the 

 theory, combined as it should be with practice, will probably advance the 

 angler considerably before his uneducated compeers in the gentle craft. 

 A competent knowledge also of ichthyology is useful to the traveller 

 angler in other lands, and the exquisite wonders of the fresh water and 

 ocean become additionally attractive when the angler-naturalist can with 

 the certainty afforded by a few distinct and well defined rules settle the 

 family, if not the species, of a new or novel capture. 



The various remarks I shall make in this chapter will be as practical as 

 possible, and I shall avoid introducing matter which is not necessary to 

 the fresh- water angler in the connection indicated. The wonders of our 

 native waters are manifold, but the practical angler, much as he may 

 appreciate the acquirement of knowledge, will not thank me for a long 

 dissertation on the monsters of the ocean and the curious habits they 

 make manifest. The "divine" Du Bartus, as Walton calls him, has 

 sufficiently spoken of the extraordinary marine animals, and further than 



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