INTJiODUOTORY EEMAEKS. 8 



learned discussions on the natural history of the fish (which are 

 all very well in their way), and when our tyro has read them 

 carefully, he does not know then the best way of taking the 

 various fish. Moreover, most works upon angling, as I have 

 before hinted in my preface, treat so fully of salmon, trout, 

 and grayling, that they don't do justice to the so-called 

 coarse fish. Salmon, trout, and grayling are utterly 

 beyond the reach of thousands of our humbler anglers. Let my 

 readers bear in mind that I shall avoid mention of either salmon, 

 trout, or grayling in these pages, but that the so-called coarse fish 

 will be dealt with in a most complete manner. Little things 

 connected with the natural history of the various fish will be 

 referred to, and they will, I think, instruct and interest the 

 tyro, so that he may be able to know the habits and haunts, and 

 also recognize the fish when he sees it. I would also have him 

 bear in mind that the instructions laid down here are the 

 results of careful experience, from which, perhaps, the better 

 class of anglers who only get an occasional day by the river 

 side may also derive profit. 



We will look for a few minutes at Shefiield, as I believe it 

 will be interesting to many anglers at that town, which is 

 the very stronghold of bottom fishers, and it is necessary to 

 go back twenty years or so. A busy and clever community 

 of nearly 200,000 souls existed then, which had made its 

 home in a position of unrivalled healthiness and natural 

 beauty ; hill and valley gave Sheffield a variety of surface, 

 which lends its aid to sanitary arrangements, the rivers Don 

 and Sheaf meet here and mingle their waters, the town was 

 then not crowded, it spreads itself over twenty thousand acres 

 of ground, stretching ten miles in one direction and four miles 

 in the other. There was then actually an inhabited house 

 for every five inhabitants of the town. Add to this the fact 

 that Sheffield possessed even then a public supply of pure 

 water, unequalled in quality by any other town in England ; 



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