ANGLING. 



I HAVE often thought that the practice of angling was 

 so intimately connected with the prospect of green fields 

 and the smell of fresh meadows, that the general fondness 

 for the sport originated in a great measure in our love 

 of nature. I am so far, therefore, from considering the 

 angler a model of patience, as Dr. Franklin regarded him, 

 that I would rather look upon him as a sort of indolent 

 devotee of nature, who prefers the voluptuous quiet of 

 this sedentary sport to the more active habits of the gun- 

 ner, the botanist, or the geologist. There are individuals, 

 undoubtedly, who delight in angling from the love of 

 the sport itself. Such are our inveterate fishers around 

 the wharves and harbors, and who are generally better 

 acquainted with the respective flavors of the different 

 species of the finny tribe than with fishes as subjects 

 of natural history. But the majority of anglers will be 

 found to be genuine lovers of nature, and, like old Izaak 

 Walton, as familiar with the plants that are growing at 

 their feet, as with the little shining inhabitants of the 

 lake and stream. 



I am not of that sect of sentimentalists who would con- 

 demn angling on account of its cruelty. The pangs suf- 

 fered by a little fish while expiring on the green bank 

 are but momentary, and probably not to be compared 

 with those of a bird when first taken from his native 

 haunts and shut up in a cage. Fishes are but- feebly 

 endowed with the sense of feeling or touch, and have a 

 brain so small as hardly to afford them a very definite 



