THE SALMON. 1 1 5 



their fish. Miss Lloyd was reported in " Land and 

 Water" to have had one on for, I think, twelve 

 hours, and it escaped after all. " The play is not 

 worth the candle." I have been an hour, nay 

 n'iQre, before I killed my fish, but that has been 

 under special circumstances. As a rule, little over a 

 minute to the pound is sufficient, just as a penny 

 a minute will, under ordinary circumstances, pay, 

 if it do not satisfy, a cabman. I know I ought to 

 kill more deliberately securidum artem^s Moliere's 

 doctors would say, but I am content to kill absque 

 morel. The largest fish I ever captured, he whose 

 antecedents are duly recorded in "The Auto- 

 biography of Salmo Salar " weighed thirty pounds, 

 and was gatfed within little more than forty-five 

 minutes from the time he was hooked. I killed 

 several fish last season from eighteen to twenty 

 pounds, and not one took more than twenty-five 

 minutes to kill, A fish, from the time he is 

 hooked, should never be allowed one second to 

 breathe, far less to collect his ideas and mature his 

 plans for escape. " Butt him, yer sowl ! " howls 

 Paddy; "Gie him the butt, mon 1" shouts Sandy; 

 " Stick to him, run with him, never let him rest," 

 say I. 



The art and mystery of fly-tying is a great art 

 and a great mystery. You must "tie" something 



