FEBRUARY 27 



Why, then, should we set a limit, 

 voluntarily or under authority, to the 

 number of patterns ? 



Public opinion on the subject, even 

 though it is led by Sir Edward Grey, a 

 first-class man alike on the riverside and 

 at the Foreign Office, is not a sufficient 

 inducement. The deceptive nature of its 

 influence has been neatly brought into 

 the light by a thinker of famed lucidity. 

 "A thousand men with fishing-rods," 

 says Mr. Mallock in his Critical Examin- 

 ation of Socialism, "might meet in an 

 inn parlour and vote that such and such 

 flies were sufficient to attract trout. 

 But it lies with the trout to determine 

 whether or no he will rise to them. It 

 is a question, not of what the fishermen 

 think, but of what the trout thinks ; and 

 the fishermen's thoughts are effective only 

 when they coincide with the trout's." 

 One fears that The Edinburgh Review, 

 published in London, is writ by grave 

 and reverend seniors studying the trout- 

 streams, when these are their theme, 



