THE COMMON TROUT. 219 



hook, and play them pleasantly, and deftly dip 

 your landing-net beneath them, and then uplift 

 them handsomely into your coracle, their strong 

 curved sinewy tails essaying all in vain an upward 

 spring from that same cunning soft reticulation, 

 which yielding to the pressure from within, admits 

 no more of any bright re-bounding, and knows not 

 in all its points a point cfappui. Now give him a 

 sharp, but not a crashing tap upon the head with 

 any little bit of stick about you, to " still his pant- 

 ings of dismay, 11 and prevent the probability of his 

 jumping over the gunnel of the boat, and telling 

 every fish he meets with " in choral cave, or clear 

 translucent fountain," that you are an " abominable 

 inhuman" Anglus sed non Angelus, as the man in 

 the south country said of Milton when he saw him 

 sleeping. 



N.B. Remember that when angling from a boat, 

 and after hooking, reeling in, and being about to lift 

 upwards a goodly trout which has firmly fixed him- 

 self on your drag-fly, the very worst thing yourself 

 (or assistant and unsuccessor) can possibly do, is 

 to make a lounge with the landing-net, miss the by 

 no means exhausted receiver, but master the drop- 

 fly by securely hooking it among the meshes. The 

 fish is 'sure to fill with virtuous indignation at the 

 unlooked-for aggression of " two to one." He will 

 probably plunge directly downwards, or make a 

 sudden run beneath the boat, and you have then 

 the unpleasant, and by no means productive option, 

 of either allowing him to break your line, or of try- 

 ing whether your net, with its iron-encircled rim, 



