FISHING LITERATURE 



who can ride, shoot, use a rod, and knows most 

 about the ways and habits of fox, game, or fish, 

 as the case may be, will ever secure the greatest 

 amount of sport. There is always something 

 more to be learned ; season after season reveals 

 something new to the intelligent sportsman ; and 

 I fail to understand how it happens that so many 

 men who are sportsmen at heart, and who would 

 be utterly disgusted if they thought they were not 

 considered to be such, can be content to go on 

 in the same groove year after year, and yet know 

 little more respecting the animals, birds, and fish, 

 in pursuit of which they have spent half a life- 

 time or more, than they did at the commence- 

 ment of their career. But so it is, and I have 

 frequently observed that fishermen are peculiarly 

 ignorant in this respect ; although perhaps less 

 so of late years than formerly, a very great deal 

 of ignorance still prevails amongst them, and 

 at least half of them know nothing whatever 

 about the water-flies which are taken as food by 

 trout and grayling. I think, perhaps, that long- 

 winded treatises and long names serve to choke 

 them off; there is too much theoretical instruc- 

 tion. There are no end of books on such 

 subjects, but it is difficult to know which are the 

 ones to read. One volume treats principally of 

 one portion of the subject, another of a second, 

 and so on, until it becomes necessary to purchase 



