112 SALMONIA. 



POIET. The explanation that you have 

 just been giving us of the effects of playing 

 fish, I confess, alarms me, and makes me 

 more alarmed than I was before, that we are 

 pursuing a very cruel amusement ! for death 

 by strangling, I conceive, must be very 

 laborious, slow, and painful. 



PHYS. I think as I did before I was an 

 angler, as to the merciless character of field- 

 sports ; but I doubt if this part of the process 

 of the fly-fisher ought so strongly to alarm 

 your feelings. As far as analogies from warm- 

 blooded animals can apply to the case, the 

 death that follows obstructed respiration is 

 quick, and preceded by insensibility. There 

 are many instances of persons who have re- 

 covered from the apparent death produced 

 by drowning, and had no recollection of any 

 violent or intense agony ; indeed, the alarm 

 or passion of fear generally absorbs all the 

 sensibility, and the physical suffering is lost 

 in the mental agitation. I can answer from 

 my own experience, that there is no pain 

 which precedes the insensibility occasioned by 

 breathing gases unfitted for supporting life, 



