PARTING WORDS ON SPORT. 489 



Bute ; and I well remember his exciting and graphic account 

 of a captured skate two hundred pounds in weight ! He was 

 two hours in moving the flat monster from the ground, to 

 which it had glued itself, his boatmen all the time assuring 

 him it was only " a fast " ; but he kept firm to his own 

 opinion, and was rewarded at last by a yielding and shaking 

 movement, which caused " his heart to leap into his mouth." 

 By careful play, the ponderous creature was raised, and 

 tired sufficiently to follow the boat. As soon as it was 

 coaxed into shallow water, by the help of several long gaffs 

 it was trailed high and dry upon the sandy beach. 



About the gloaming of the 28th of September 1874, a mes- 

 sage was sent to me from my friends James and Eobert 

 Turner, fishermen of the Solway, that they had captured a 

 fish " the like o' which they had never seen afore ; and they 

 would feel mickle obleeged if I would step doun and tell them 

 its name." They would have fetched it up, they added, but its 

 weight was an insuperable obstacle. 



As their fishing-station was only a quarter of a mile dis- 

 tant, I was soon alongside of the monster, which proved to 

 be a small specimen of the basking shark, nine and a half 

 feet long, with three tiers of teeth the front row, as in all 

 sharks, being mobile. This shark, I believe, is the only non- 

 voracious species, feeding chiefly on marine plants and small 

 fish, and it attains the enormous length of forty feet. It is 

 distinguished easily by the small size of the teeth. 



There are often rare and curious fish taken both with net 

 and line by our fishermen ; and their life, if full of peril, has 

 abundance of excitement too. 



I have now endeavoured to show, first, that all the world's 

 a hunting-field, and all men and women hunters and hunt- 

 resses in it, the quarry being that pleasurable emotion caused 

 by raised spirits in other words, excitement. Next, that 

 over-indulgence in this state of mind, even in sacred things, is 



