10 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER 



Comparison of angling with other sports is futile. 

 We are not all similarly endowed. We begin life with 

 a diversity of gifts. This man is born with a faculty 

 for mathematics, that with a genius for music, a third 

 \yj,th a tale.nt. fqr^painting. We are anglers, golfers, 

 crick'eter3,'''f6crtB£Hrers, as nature determines, and those 

 /.'rWhofejb jin.nate .bfeft\ is.*towards one variety of sport seem 

 to have but little understanding for the others. Least 

 of all, perhaps, is the angler understood by those who 

 do not share his feeling. To sing the joys of angling 

 to one who lacks the angling sense is vain as talk of 

 music to the deaf or of colour to the blind. Only to 

 those in sympathy with him do the angler's rhapsodies 

 appeal ; to others they are foolishness. 



No one is so frequently the object of cheap sarcasm 

 as he. He is the perennial butt of the small wit, who 

 in the things — the many things — beyond his 

 Jw poor capacity sees but provocatives to cack- 

 ling laughter. The worm with which, in the 

 popular imagination, the angler endeavours 

 to entice the wary trout, is surely the worm 

 that never dies. Our friends are tireless in 

 their efforts to preserve the memory of 

 Johnson's peevish definition of our art. But 

 though we be, by temperament, unable to 



