EXCUSES OF ANGLERS. 9 



day, sometimes thunder in the air, very often too 

 many white clouds ; and failing all these, there 

 still remains the great excuse which is equally appli- 

 cable to all states of weather and water, that some- 

 how or other the trout would not take all of which 

 we dismiss upon the ground that they should take 

 the trout. Anglers have also an extraordinary knack 

 of raising, hooking, and playing, but losing large 

 trout. The trout once escaped, there is ample 

 scope for the imagination to conjecture its pro- 

 bable size. 



We have never heard of any phrenologist having 

 made the discovery that persons addicted to angling 

 lack or lose the faculty of correctly distinguishing 

 the essential properties of all matter number, size, 

 and ponderosity. It is certain, however, that in 

 relation to fish they frequently show a lamentable 

 deficiency in this power. Or, to take the harsher 

 view that we fear finds too much favour with a cen- 

 sorious world, they are in too many cases guilty of 

 habitual and most intolerable exaggerations, not to 

 use a stronger word. We think it a duty on the 

 part of all sober-minded and truthful anglers, to set 

 their faces against this vice, and to expose its " hid- 

 eous mien " on all occasions. It has brought a stigma 

 on our fraternity ; it has been the cause of many a 

 day's disappointment to believing listeners ; and it 

 has a tendency to propagate itself, for an honestly 

 disposed angler is often through it himself driven to 

 desert the ways of truth, in order that his " take " 



