THe Angler and tHe FisKerman 19 



methodical spoiler, ignorantly condemns the honest 

 man the really humane men and women who are 

 sincere in their condemnation but totally ignorant of 

 their subject. 



One of this sort, an estimable woman in public life, 

 loudly preaches against the chase and is all the time 

 drawing dividends that provide her with the means to 

 indulge in the vulgarest and cruelest of fashionable 

 extravagances among them the wool of the unborn 

 lamb, furs from the backs of fast-disappearing quad- 

 rupeds, and feathers of the farmers' most valuable 

 insect-destroying song birds and these wicked 

 dividends derived from several acid factories, a gas 

 house, a power plant, and a dye works that have not 

 only killed off the trillions of fishes in several rivers 

 but destroyed forever the very habitat of the species ! 



Another of this sort is well exemplified in the char- 

 acter of an old gentleman in Pennsylvania who loudly 

 proclaims against trout fishing, but who utterly ruins 

 nearly eight miles of trout water, once the home of 

 thousands of lordly fish, by permitting his mill hands 

 to run off sawdust in the streams. 



This poor, ignorant soul objects to you and me chi- 

 valrously taking half a dozen specimens on the fly 

 catching the cunning trout with an imitation of the 

 living thing itself destroys by the thousands for food 

 and play while he mercilessly slaughters the entire 

 immediate supply, and prevents further propagation 

 of the whole species with the refuse of his forest- 

 devastating, money-making machine. 



True," the Angler like all fishermen, and like the 

 fishes 'themselves, kills his specimens, but this killing 

 is ordained by nature herself at least it has better 

 grounds for excuse, if excuse it needs, than that ten- 



