2 INTRODUCTION. 



cular exertion, than any other, while Nature spreads 

 out and around her manifold and exhaustless beauties. 



" The hills and mountains raised from the plains, 

 The plains extended level with the ground ; 



The grounds divided into sundry veins, 



The veins enclosed with rivers running round. 



Those rivers making way through nature's drains, 

 With headlong course into the sea profound ; 



The raging sea, beneath the valleys low, 



Where lakes, and rills, and rivulets do flow. 



" The lofty woods, the forests wide and long, 



Adorn'd with leaves and branches fresh and green, 



In whose cool bowers the birds, with many a song, 

 To welcome with their choir the summer's queen; 



The meadows fair, where Flora's gifts among 

 Are intermixt with verdant grass between; 



The silver-scaled fish that softly swim 



Within the sweet brook's crystal watery stream." 



So sang Cotton, in a right worthy vein; arid there 

 is no true angler who does not often find himself 

 imbued with the like feeling of admiration and grati- 

 tude towards Him who " made the heaven" and " de- 

 corated the earth," and 



" Whilst he looks on these with joyful eye, 

 Feels his mind rapt above the starry sky." 



Angling is of various kinds, but it is divided into 

 three principal branches, which include all the rest. 

 These are, Fly-fishing, where the angling is at the 

 surface of the water; Trolling, or Spinning > by which 

 we angle at mid- water; and Bottom-fishing, which is 

 angling upon or near the ground. Of the first of 

 these it is not my purpose to treat in these pages, 

 which will be devoted solely to practical directions for 

 the two other species of angling, with such information 

 as may tend to facilitate and promote it. 



