EXCUSES OF ANGLERS. 9 



trout. The trout once escaped, there is ample scope 

 for the imagination to conjecture its probable size. 



We have never heard of any phrenologist having 

 made the discovery that persons addicted to angling 

 lack or lose the faculty of correctly distinguishing 

 the essential properties of all matter, number, size, 

 and ponderosity. It is certain, however, that in re- 

 lation to fish they frequently show a lamentable 

 deficiency in this power. Or, to take the harsher 

 view that we fear finds too much favour with a cen- 

 sorious world, they are in too many cases guilty of 

 habitual and most intolerable exaggerations, not to 

 use a stronger word. We think it a duty on the 

 part of all sober-minded and truthful anglers, to set 

 their faces against this vice, and to expose its "hideous 

 mien" on all occasions. It has brought a stigma 

 on our fraternity ; it has been the cause of many a 

 day's disappointment to believing listeners ; and it 

 has a tendency to propagate itself, for an honestly- 

 disposed angler is often through it himself driven to 

 desert the ways of truth, in order that his " take" 

 may not sink into utter insignificance beside that of 

 a more boastful but less veracious companion. Ee- 

 turning recently from a day's fishing, which had 

 been cut short by a violent thunderstorm, we en- 

 countered at the railway station a well-known angler, 

 and waited till the appointed time, well pleased to 

 listen to his pleasant stories about angling, holding 

 a foremost place amongst which were tales of his 

 having detected the frauds and impostures of brag- 



