INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 3 



the hope that it may prove interesting and instructive to 

 those anglers who can indulge in this branch of sport, but 

 the so-called coarse fish will be dealt with in a most com- 

 plete 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 Sheffield, as T 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 ; 

 and any one would have said at that time, " Surely here is the 

 place where the working man may enjoy life, uncankered by 

 disease, and stretching out to its natural length," yet, what 

 was the state of affairs then 1 There was a death-rate of 

 thirty-four in the thousand, ten or twelve per thousand more 

 than London with all its overcrowding, and double that of 

 the percentage of country districts throughout England ; two 

 or three thousand souls were killed annually in Sheffield by 

 unsanitary conditions, as certainly as though that number 

 had been gathered once a year in some horrid " black hole," 

 and suffocated in their own poisoning exhalations. One 

 could see the alleys from which reeking and undrained cess- 



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