THE PUFF PISCATORIAL. 211 
private delectation. If the Teme grayling wild rush 
at the bait like greyhounds, or any other hounds—or 
whales, if they like—in heaven’s name let them ; let 
Mr. Allies work his BIG HOOK as many times up, and 
as many times down, per minute, “ more or less,” as he 
pleases ; yea, and let the anglers “ who consider the ar- 
tificial grasshopper to be either amountain or amouse,” 
still remain in thatsomewhat peculiar zoological belief ; 
—vwe will not, even by our affectionate solicitude, run 
any risk of damaging the symmetry of the structure. - 
Mr. Allies’ circular shall remain in. its “integrity for 
us ; one perfect whole, inimitable, zmpayable.” 
‘So much for the puff direct. 
Another branch of piscatorial puffing, and one 
which is rapidly assuming most obnoxious propor- 
tions, is exemplified every week in the advertising 
columns of our sporting literature. This is the “puff 
hyperbolical,” wherein certain unscrupulous owners 
and lessees of hotels, fishing-quarters, and rivers of 
unpronounceable orthography in various outskirts of 
the three kingdoms, endeavour to delude the guileless 
into their nets, or more correctly “man-traps.” Woe 
betide the fisherman who commits himself to the Night 
Mail North, or, still worse, the Irish Express, on the 
faith of. such tempting allurements. The chances are 
two to one that the confiding wretch so beguiled finds 
himself landed at “a well-appointed family hotel,” 
(consisting of a couple of roofless attics over a floor- 
