248 THE PRACTICAL FISHERMAN. 



defy human calculation, hence the sport of one phase of the art. What 

 says the old fallacy ? "Is there such a thing as motion ? Either a 

 body is in one place or else in another. Both simultaneously is 

 impossible." I should, and so would anybody who tried, be simply 

 attempting the unravelment of this rigmarole in giving arbitrary direc- 

 tions for finding trout on the move. As a curiosity, I will wind-up this 

 part of the subject by giving the directions of the " Book of St. Albans " 

 anent the matter : 



"The troughte for by cause he is a right deynteous fyssh and also 

 ryght fervente ... He is on clere gravely grounde and in a streme. 

 Ye may angle to hym all tymes with nyth a grounde lyne lyeng or 

 rennynge; savyng in leppynge tyme and thenne with a dubbe. And 

 erly with a rennynge grounde lyne and forth in the day with a ground 

 lyne." One word more the best fish are ever found in the best places. 

 This is an axiom. 



Before telling my readers "how to fish," yet a few other notes 

 referring to the precautions and general modus of trout fishing. These 

 relate to the natural history of the fish somewhat, and are of unques- 

 tionable utility. The sense of sight, being so intimately involved in the 

 taking of a fly, demands our attention. I must commence by saying that 

 it is a mistake to suppose that trout cannot see and estimate the size, 

 &c., of a body out of their own element. I am prepared to admit that 

 some fishes are unable to do so, such as the loach and the miller's thumb, 

 these being, from their nocturnal habits and seclusion, naturally predis- 

 posed to an amount of laxity of visual power. But the trout is different. 

 It, indeed, is ever on the alert, and probably uses its eyes with greater 

 effect than any other freshwater fish. Fish, and especially trout, as 

 Ronald has demonstrated, can also see more than is usually supposed, 

 i.e., more in quantity of an object than we might be willing, without due 

 consideration, to believe. In an ingenious diagram Eonald has, in his 

 "Fly fisher' s Entomology," shown this conclusively. It must, in order 

 even to partially understand what is meant, be borne in mind that water 

 does not receive and transmit the pencils of light falling from air into it 

 and through it in a direct line. The line, by reason of the refractory 

 power, is, indeed, bent, and thus when the angler probably thinks himself 

 unobserved or completely hidden, he is all the time, perhaps, projected in 

 the fish's sight high in the air, and the obstacle which prevented him 

 seeing the fish is no obstacle at all to the fish. I trust I have made what 

 I mean sufficiently clear without a diagram ; if not, I would refer my 

 readers to the work itself. The whole fact is based on two well-known 

 optical laws, viz., that the sine of the angle of incidence of a ray of 

 light passing out of and into water is always the sine of the angle of 



