SEEK TRUTH AND PURSUE IT. 47 



measured nineteen feet, and to have weighed 350 

 pounds. No doubt, an incorrect allegation does not 

 in any way increase the actual size of fishes, and 

 few people now-a-days can take exact cognizance 

 of what was done at Mannheim in the year 1497 ; 

 but, even in these degenerate days, amid our own 

 translucent waters, and among species in no way 

 remarkable for their ordinary dimensions, we ever 

 and anon meet with ancient individuals , which vastly 

 exceed the usual weight and measure of their kind. 

 But, in spite of this, let no angler, whether in the 

 bloom of early youth, the power of matured man- 

 hood, or with the silver locks of " hoar antiquity 11 

 above his wrinkled brow, ever induce within him- 

 self, or express to others, the belief, that at all times 

 and places he is perpetually catching enormous trouts 

 in vast numbers, because we happen to know that 

 this is not the case. We don't insist upon any 

 one weighing every fish he captures, but we request 

 that no one after jerking out a few parr, will main- 

 tain next morning, or even that very night, that 

 he has had a most toilsome but very glorious day, 

 and has killed five dozen and four of the finest 

 trouts the human eye ever gazed upon. " All men 

 are liars" and several anglers is a proposition 

 the exact import of which depends much on the 

 mode of construction. 



