AN APOLOGY FOR FISHING 49 



so essential an element in the troublous life of the 

 nineteenth century. They absorb the thoughts 

 and confine the attention, for the time being, to 

 what — in a comparative sense — may fairly be called 

 trifles. You cannot occupy yourself with any deep 

 abstract speculation when it is a question of 

 catching a trout or bringing down a partridge. 



The fact is that a prodigious amount of ignorance 

 prevails in connection with the sport of angling. 

 People class all forms and modes of fishing together, 

 and include them every one under the definition 

 given at the commencement of this paper. The 

 prevalent idea in the minds of most people is that 

 fishing consists of sitting in an arm-chair in a punt 

 watching a float bobbing up and down in the water, 

 and partaking at intervals of very flat beer served 

 out of a stone jar by the attendant boatman. Now 

 this — the very lowest form of fishing that exists, 

 and, unhappily, the form under which it is the 

 oftenest and most conspicuously presented to view — 

 so little really represents this particular sport, that 

 I think I am hardly speaking too strongly in saying 

 that no real fisherman would consent to hear such a 

 proceeding classed under the head of fishing at all. 

 When a sportsman speaks of fishing, he is thinking 

 either of fly-fishing or spinning, and most generally 

 of the former. 



II D 



