CHAP, vi.] ANGLING. 59 



Roy's down yonder aa getting a ducking in the river ; and they 

 are wise enough not to run the risk of it." Not bad reasoning 

 either, thought I ; nor can I wonder that the poor water-bailiff's 

 would prefer a quiet bowl of toddy to a row with a party of wild 

 Badenoch poachers, who, though good-natured enough on the 

 whole, were determined to have their night's fun out in spite of 

 all opposition. There are worse poachers, too, than these said 

 Highlanders, who only come down now and then more for the 

 amusement than the profit of the thing ; and whom it is generally 

 better policy to keep friends with than to make enemies of. 



The ponderous lexicographer, who describes a fishing-rod as a 

 stick with a fool at one end, and a worm at the other, displays in 

 this saying more wit than wisdom. Not that I quite go the 

 whole length of my quaint and amiable old friend, Isaac Walton, 

 who implies in every page of his paragon of a book, that the art 

 of angling is the summum bonum of happiness, and that an 

 angler must needs be the best of men. I do believe, however, 

 that no determined angler can be naturally a bad or vicious man. 

 No man who enters into the silent communings with Nature, 

 whose beauties he must be constantly surrounded by, and familiar 

 with during his ramblings as an angler, can fail to be improved 

 in mind and disposition during his solitary wanderings amongst 

 the most lovely and romantic works of the creation, in the wild 

 Highland glens and mountains through which the best streams 

 take their course. 1 do not include in my term angler, the pond 

 or punt fisher, however well versed he may be in the arts of 

 spitting worms and impaling frogs, so learnedly discussed by 

 Isaac notwithstanding the kindliness and simplicity of heart so 

 conspicuous in every line he writes. Angling in my sense of 

 the word implies, wandering with rod and creel in the wild soli- 

 tudes, and tempting (or endeavouring to do so) the fish from 

 their clear water, with artificial fly or minnow. Nothing can 

 be more unlike the " worm " described as forming one end of 

 the thing called a fishing-rod, than the gay and gaudy collection 

 of feathers and tinsel which form the attraction of a Findhorn 

 fly. Let us look at the salmon-fly, which I have just finished, 

 and which now lies on the table before me, ready for trial in 

 some clear pool of the river. To begin : I tie with well-waxed 

 silk a portion of silkworms' intestines on a highly-tempered and 



