SPEAKING GENERALLY 23 



the unaffected hospitality of brothers of the 

 angle in Australia, the merry Basque knaves 

 with whom I fished at Biarittz, the blaspheming 

 Spaniards and pious Mussulmin who took me out 

 at Tangier and Dar-el-Beida, the glories of spring 

 weather at Madeira all have their place in my 

 affections. Yet it may fairly be doubted whether, 

 for all their schnapper and a score of other fishes 

 that we know nothing of in our cold northern 

 seas, any coast north or south of the Equator, 

 east of Greenwich or west, can offer on the whole 

 better sport than a little knowledge and patience 

 will discover on the coast of Britain that faces 

 south between Dungeness and the Land's End. 

 Discarding for the moment the hundred bays and 

 estuaries of the east and west sides, the unrivalled 

 rythe-fishing among the Scottish isles, with almost 

 virgin grounds on the west coast of Ireland, we 

 may find in four out of the six Channel counties 

 every kind of sea-fishing known in South Britain. 

 The chalk foreshore of Kent, the sandy bays and 

 shingle beaches of Sussex, and the rocky grounds 

 of Devon and Cornwall yield the finest chance of 

 bass and mullet, or mackerel, cod, pollack, whit- 

 ing, conger, every sea-fish, great and small, that 

 means anything to the fisherman or epicure. Here 

 and there, over-fishing has unquestionably worked 

 the evil on the home grounds, of which it is capa- 

 ble, but the fishes most favoured by the sportsman, 



