104 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SALMON FISHING. 



made of sterner stuff." There is a certain spurious 

 sort of humanity going about that I cannot under- 

 stand. Thus I know a lady who will not eat game, 

 because, she says, shooting is a cruel amusement ; but 

 she is very much addicted to fowls, and all domestic 

 poultry, feeding them one day, and eating them up the 

 next, with treacherous alacrity and amiable persever- 

 ance. It would be more candid in her, therefore, to 

 say to us sportsmen, like the fox in the fable, — 



" Go, but be moderate in your food ; 

 A pheasant too might do me good." 



" I once saw," says the learned and accomplished 

 Dr. Gillespie, " one of those all-devouring fish in a 

 curious predicament. In fishing, or rather strolling, 

 within these few years, with a rod in one hand and a 

 book in the other, so as to alternate reading and fish- 

 ing, as the clouds came and went, I observed a great 

 many June-flies, at which the fish were occasionally 

 rising, and which at the same time were picked up by 

 the swallows, as they skimmed over the surface of the 

 still water. It so happened that a trout from beneath 

 and a swallow from above had fixed their affections 

 upon the same yellow-winged and tempting fly. 

 Down came the swallow, and up came the open mouth 

 of the fish, into which, in pursuit of his prey, the 

 swallow pitched his head. The struggle was not long^ 

 but pretty severe ; and the swallow was once or twice 

 nearly immersed, wings and all, in the water, before 

 he got himself disentangled from the sharp teeth of the 

 fish." It is true that the trout had no intention of en- 

 countering the bird ; but every one knows that pike will 

 pull young ducks under the water, and devour them. 



