PREFACE. xiii 
of the accessories which he paints so gra- 
phically and invitingly—his “honey-suckle 
hedges”—his “airy creatures'”—his “silver 
streams”—than for the actual fishing ? I verily 
believe he has done as much to promote a 
genial and healthy love of Nature as any man 
who ever lived. 
That Fishing has, by thus leading up to 
the study of Natural History, acquired a pre- 
scriptive right to be associated with it—as I 
have taken leave to do in the subsequent 
Notes—is a question which no angler would 
probably dispute. 
" Yarrell says, that few have expressed their admiration 
of the Nightingale’s song in more fervent or more natural 
terms than “honest Izaak Walton, who loved birds almost as 
well as he loved fish,”—quoting from him that graphic eulogy 
of the bird :—“ But the Nightingale, another of my airy crea- 
tures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instru- 
mental throat, that it might make mankind to think that mi- 
racles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very 
labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, 
the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and fall- 
ing, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be 
lifted up above earth, and say, ‘Lord, what music hast thou 
provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad 
men such music upon earth””—British Birds, 1. 319. 
