JULY 159 



Bad as things are in Yorkshire, as any traveller by 

 the Midland or Great Northern lines may see for 

 himself, they cannot be in the last stage of hopeless- 

 ness, seeing that a single town in that county boasts of 

 seven thousand avowed anglers. If there is a great 

 deal to restore, there is also a great deal to preserve ; it 

 ought to be done ; it is worth encountering a great deal 

 of worry and expense to save such a means of recreation 

 for an artisan population. 



LXI 



If the truth must be told, these Yorkshire anglers 

 are competitive rather than contemplative, as any one 

 may see by glancing down the columns of competitive 

 the Fishing Gazette. Angling for roach, Anglers 

 chub, and other coarse fish is a fine exercise of patience 

 and a few other virtues; but it becomes just a trifle 

 insipid unless extraneous excitement is imported by 

 the addition of stakes. Then your game of patience 

 turns into piquet ; and so long as matches are decided 

 and stakes won by the weight of coarse fish captured, 

 no harm is done ; for, besides the enormous reproductive 

 powers of such fish, in England, at least, a statutory 

 annual close-time has been established. Unluckily, 

 the killing of trout has been made in Scotland a 

 matter of prize-winning. Almost daily is the sacred 

 bosom of Loch Leven desecrated by this ignoble 

 rivalry ; and the hallowed founts of Ettrick and Yarrow 

 are incessantly ransacked with an ardour certainly not 

 born of the sport offered by the wretched fishlets which 



