OCTOBER 187 



write of things he knows. I should cut a very poor 

 figure indeed with a Nottingham winch, a traveller 

 float, and paste for bait. 



If uncertainty, as aforesaid, be the source and cause 

 of peculiar charm in angling, it is by no means the 

 only one. There is the mystery of the unseen; the 

 difficulty to be encountered by an air-breathing biped 

 circumventing a legless, but wary, creature inhabiting 

 a different medium. Best of all, perhaps, is the need 

 that takes the angler to the waterside ; for it is there 

 that the beauty of every fair landscape culminates 

 there that beauty may be found even in landscapes 

 that are far from fair. It is so in all parts of our island, 

 be it where the masterful Spey chafes and roars against 

 opposing scarps, or where lucent Itchen lingers among 

 whispering reeds and glides through flowery pastures ; 

 be it where water-lilies float their ivory chalices on the 

 dark bosom of some nameless tarn, or where fierce 

 gusts sweep bellowing from the river flank of Stob- 

 a'choire to lash the face of Loch Treig into pale fury. 

 One may be happy without woods and content without 

 mountains, but one need not be a fisherman to weary 

 soon of a scene without water. 



In one respect, it must be owned, the fly-fisher is at 

 a disadvantage with the fox-hunter and the shooter 

 the big-game shooter, at least : it is by the rarest chance 

 that he encounters anything in the nature of adventure. 

 Exciting episode he may fairly expect; but adventure 

 with an element of risk no. The fox-hunter may 

 meet with it on the first good scenting day ; that is 

 why his pursuit has earned and kept the title of the 



