24 THOMPSON'S PHILOSOPHY. 



transformations, and most ingenious labours, will afford ample 

 occupation and amusement for nearly every season of the 

 year, and moreover present us, if we choose, a collection of 

 cabinet paintings, in whose exhibition and contemplation (al- 

 ways with reference to their Great Designer) we may take a 

 laudable delight. But here, ere it be declared, let us antici- 

 pate the objection of some gentle reader who, numbering us 

 with those who kill Butterflies for amusement, may have al- 

 ready pronounced us worse than a Domitian, who killed flies 

 for the same purpose only. Now there is no subject, probably, 

 on which there has been more " straining at gnats and splitting 

 of straws " than that of cruelty to animals as connected with 

 our own pleasures. Take for example the gentle Poet of the 

 Seasons, that most eloquent advocate of oppressed animals ; 

 yet Thompson was a fisher not an angler, mark ye, but a 

 fly -fisher. Accordingly, "the well-dissembled fly" he con- 

 siders a harmless ruse, and bids us 



" Fix with gentle twitch the barbed hook ;" 



and then adds, beseechingly, 



"But let not on that hook the tortured worm 

 Convulsive twist hi agonizing folds !" 



forgetting the convulsions of the agonized Fish, with a hook 

 in its lacerated jaws, and gasping for its native element. 



And now, as a collector of Insect specimens, though that, 

 save for a temporary purpose, is not our profession, let us 

 endeavour, with what dexterity we may, to split our own 



