154 GUT SUBSTITUTES 



dynasties rise and fall ; generations of men are written 

 off with the ages ; but Lochiel's beeches endure, living 

 recorders of Job's repining phrase 



' Homo quasi flos egreditur et confer itur.' 



XXXIX 



When the compiler of a catalogue of second-hand 

 aut books classifies some volumes under the 



substitutes heading of Angling and others under the 

 heading of Sport, it looks as if he did not regard angling 

 as a sport. We anglers, however, know better than to 

 take offence, as we might justly do, if, as certain profane 

 persons have suggested, angling literature were rele- 

 gated to the category of Fiction. We know that angling 

 not only takes high rank among field -sports (notwith- 

 standing the ungenerous slight passed on it by the 

 immortal Porthos ' La peche est un plaisir roturier ; 

 je le laisse d Mousqueton ' his valet) but that, once let 

 a man come under the spell of the waterside, and even 

 old age will not release him from it. The late Canon 

 Greenwell was over ninety years of age when he told 

 me that he had killed some trout in that summer, 

 which he feared would be the last he should land ; but 

 he lived to ninety-seven, and killed some (in a pond, it 

 is true, with a float and worm) in the last year of his 

 life. Tom Todd Stoddart put the right sentiment into 

 verse as a young fellow, and fulfilled as a septuagen- 

 arian the purpose expressed in them : 



'And I, when to breathe is a burden, and joy 

 Forsakes me, and life is no longer the boy, 

 On the labouring staff and the trem'rous knee 

 Shall wander, bright river, to thee.' 



