168 JUNE 



Bottom-fishing with a float for trout can have but 

 few advocates now, though I have known it resorted 

 to in a loch, not without success, when the fish were 

 * dour ' ; but minnow-fishing, unhappily, is far too 

 prevalent, especially in Scotland. It is one of those 

 acts of which a man may say with the Apostle that 

 all things are lawful for him, but all things are not 

 expedient. Time was when he who persisted in 

 whistling on the Sabbath in Scotland assuredly 

 would have been brought in collision with the law, 

 which in that fair land is called the Shirra; and 

 to this day there remain plenty of occasions for 

 stumbling into the presence of that omnipresent 

 functionary. But the Shirra has no terrors for 

 minnow-fishers; so minnow-fishing, however inex- 

 pedient, must be reckoned among things that are 

 lawful. 



There are times for minnow-fishing, too, as there 

 are times for other melancholy or inglorious occupa- 

 tions ; for there are trout in Scotland so lost to all 

 refined feeling, that the March brown and heckum- 

 peckum stir no appetite in their weighty carcases, 

 and the Zulu and red-and-teal may be trailed never 

 so cunningly over their haunts without producing 

 so much as the twinkle of a fin. To such fish 



