24 AN ANGLER'S BASKET. 



unpretentious business-like way, and there is an end of both 

 of them. You will see your fly skating up and down the 

 surface of the water, when she suddenly disappears in the 

 centre of a small ring more suggestive of the rise of a 

 grayling than a trout. Pause a moment and then strike, 

 drawing your fish down stream to your feet quietly to basket 

 him. 



THE SCIENCE OF ANGLING. 



In the earliest days hunting and fishing, the two chief 

 sports of primitive man, were necessities rather than recrea- 

 tions. As agriculture advanced, and civilisation developed, 

 he found food more readily at hand, and the duty that lay on 

 his own skill of providing food for those dependent on him 

 in time gave way in a large degree to the mere pleasure of 

 the chase. The monks who built their abbeys by the 

 clearest and most prolific streams only followed a natural 

 instinct exhibited by the earliest inhabitants of all lands ; the 

 river found them both food and drink. The primitive angler, 

 observant then as he is now, and perhaps more so, noticed 

 fish feeding on certain things which he could procure, but 

 had no hooks, and so some of the first angles used by the 

 early fishermen were pieces of straight thin bone which they 

 buried in a worm or small fish, and tying a piece of twisted 

 flax or a fine strip of hide round the middle of the bait, they 

 threw it in and awaited the result. When a fish swallowed 

 it a pull at the line transfixed the bone crosswise in the gullet 

 of the fish and it was caught ; later he used hooks shaped 

 from bones, some of them being double and some treble, 

 most of them "eyed," and all of them exhibiting a strength 

 and solidity of purpose which says much for the faith of the 

 poor aborigine in that 40 pounder which the poorest angler 

 among us hopes one of these fine days to catch. 



The hunter of these days, though still retaining some of 

 the characteristics of his rude forefathers, has long since 



