214 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



be astir with the fisher's wand seized upon me with its greatest 

 violence. I find marked down in my journal, during the period 

 mentioned, dates and details as to sport met with in the streams 

 round about Edinburgh, preliminary to those periodical visits, 

 which induce me to think that I must have been carried by my 

 enthusiasm, in the practice of the art piscatorial, far beyond the 

 bounds of common sobriety, and wasted a mighty deal of precious 

 time to little or no purpose. Be that as it may, I experience as 

 much satisfaction in looking back upon them, as I do upon hours 

 more laboriously spent, the fruit of which I have never so much 

 as enjoyed the forecast of. With educational systems, however, 

 about which we are all still at loggerheads, and at whose shifting 

 shrines every one of us, no doubt, has been more or less vic- 

 timized, an angling devotee would use little or no discretion were 

 he to interfere. 



The dates and details referred to are exact and varied enough 

 to be employed as groundwork for a review of the condition of 

 rod-fishing at that time and season round about Edinburgh ; and 

 might, with reasonable propriety, be brought to bear upon ques- 

 tions of considerable interest in connexion with it. I find, on 

 reference to my journal, that, in the course of the eight years 

 above specified, preparatory to my annual visit to St. Mary's 

 Loch, I spent nearly a hundred days in thus exploring the trout- 

 haunts within hail of my native city. Such excursions appear, 

 as they stand recorded, to have been the mere girdings up for 

 my annual campaign in the Borders, which was usually under- 

 taken (the introductory one in 1828 forming an exception) about 

 the end of April or the first week of May. To enjoy in perfec- 

 tion the fine pastoral scenery of the Ettrick Forest, a term no 

 longer appropriate, although still applied to Selkirkshire, it is 

 necessary to let the summer influences fully predominate, which 

 they rarely do before June or July in that upland district ; but for 

 fly-fishing, particularly on the lake, May in general will be found 



