86 FACETIOUS WHALE. 



practise either angling or field sports of some sort or 

 another. They all demand skill and enterprise. If 

 you ask me to reconcile angling to reason, you may 

 possibly distress me. It is an instinct, a passion, and a 

 powerful one, originally given to man for the preser- 

 vation of his existence. The waters as well as the 

 land yield forth their increase. In the joyless regions 

 of the north, when the bear famishes on the iceberg, 

 and the gaunt wolf howls amongst the snow-drifts, the 

 miserable tenant of the land stalks along the desolate 

 shores, and with his javelin, or hooks of bone, acquires 

 by his rude skill a precarious subsistence for his family. 

 Everlasting winter has stamped her iron foot upon the 

 soil : the snow whitens all interminably, except where 

 the blasts drive it from the face of the bleak rocks ; and 

 without this resource he must perish, — he and his sad 

 family together. Even so it is ordained from above. 



Thrice happy are we, who live in a more genial 

 climate, and who inherit the instinct given to our less 

 fortunate fellow-creatures, and exercise it not from hard 

 necessity, but as a means of recreation. Man being thus 

 evidently destined to fish, let us consider the style of 

 thing that is likely to give him the most gratification. 



When I read of the whale fishery, and of that animal 

 running out a mile of rope, for an instant my thoughts 

 were bent on the seas of Greenland ; but I was taken 

 aback by the frontispiece of Captain Scoresby's enter- 

 taining narrative, which represents his boat thrown 

 aloft in the air by. a playful jerk of a whale's tail, and 

 all the crew tumbling seaward in very sprawling and 

 unstudied attitudes. Now this is a sort of adventure 



