AN EXCITING SPORT. 19 



Russel characterizes the sport as butcherly and destruc- 

 tive. " Night-leistering," he says, " with the glare of 

 the pine-torches reflected from cliff, and wood, and water, 

 with the yells, the laughter, and the immersions, was 

 doubtless in some respects a fine sight, and a most excit- 

 ing sport ; but it was slaughterous and wasteful, killing 

 more fish in a few minutes than would have sufficed for a 

 season's sport and killing them, too, just when they were 

 most useful in the water, and most useless out of it. It 

 was no uncommon thing, on some of the upper fisheries 

 of the Tweed, to kill within an hour, on a February or 

 November night, a greater number of fish than had been 

 killed with the rod during the whole season (and the 

 farther up the river, the greater or more entire becomes 

 this truth), to say nothing of the far greater numbers 

 killed by poachers with the same weapon, both in and 

 out of the legal season." "'" 



So Captain Francks, writing in Oliver Cromwell's 

 time, exclaims : " When the salmon goes to the shal- 

 lows, that is the time the prejudicate native consults his 

 opportunity to put in execution that barbarous practice 

 of murdering fish by moonshine, or at other times to 

 martyr them with the blaze of a wisp and a barbed spear. 

 What ! are these cannibals or murdering moss-troopers to 

 surprise fish by the engine of fire-light 1 Such dark con- 

 spirators sprung from Fawkes or Cataline, or some infer- 

 nal incubus." 



The true angler, in his pin-suit of this iioblu fish, will 

 diic.lly use the fly. He may occasionally resort to other 

 bait, such as salmon- roc, parrta.il, ininnoxv, worm, but 



* Ituss.'l, "The Salmon" (ed. 1854), pp 100, 101. 



