20 ANGLING 



returned the fish to the water with an implement of torture like 

 a hook fastened in an unnatural way in its jaw he would not 

 have hesitated to have given him in charge of the first water 

 bailiff he met with, or failing that to have communicated the 

 facts to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 

 It was in vain that Bobbingmoon insisted that a salmon was 

 not an animal, and consequently was not within the scope of the 

 Society's good intentions and operations. Witchdorter insisted, 

 that animal or no animal, it would have been clearly a case 

 which the Society, in the interests of humanity and the enforce- 

 ment of fair angling, would have taken up and prosecuted to 

 the utmost of their resources, but Bobbingmoon would have 

 none of it. A wordy war ensued, when Mr. Hopper interposed 

 and pointed out what by this time in the heat of argument they 

 had both forgotten, viz., that the salmon was dead, and that all 

 their discussion and argument were of no avail and so much loss 

 of vital energy, and like sensible men as they both generally are 

 they agreed to differ and resumed the sport which the leap of 

 the salmon had temporarily disturbed. 



