52 CHATS ON ANGLING. 



And this same burn fishing has always had a charm for me. It 

 is passing pleasant to wander with a small 9 ft. rod up the rocky bed, 

 casting your fly into that miniature salmon pool or into that quaint 

 stickle, whose larger stones shelter the little denizens of the stream, 

 which, for their size, fight like little demons, sportive, hungry, diminutive 

 specimens of the race that produces their bulky Test and Itchen brethren. 

 One makes one's way over the rocky bed, under the birches and the 

 rowan trees, watching the grouse, the black game, or maybe the roe 

 deer silently creeping up, at peace with all the world, just as intent 

 upon the capture of the little fellows as if they were salmon. The creel 

 soon fills if the day be at all suitable. Their rocky home affords little 

 enough of insect food, as their miniature forms testify ; but look at them 

 closely ; how perfect their form, how beautiful their colouring. 



A sandwich and a pipe give you all you require in the way of 

 lunch ; the whole day is your own, to do as you like with. Freed from 

 all care, you are intent only on enjoying to the full the beauties of 

 Nature that so lavishly surround you. Such quiet, gentle sport cannot 

 but have a purifying and ennobling influence if you interpret aright all 

 the beauty of creation. And it may be that interpretation is not needed ; 

 it is enough to feel that one has a place in so fair a world. 



