FISHING AS A FINE ART. 119 



I notice in my edition of Best's Art of Angling, that the 

 author, who was a learned and clever fisherman, has no 

 less than thirty pages on " Prognostics of Weather," &c, 

 so important did he consider it for an angler to be a 

 meteorologist. 



As an illustration of the value to the fisherman of 

 some knowledge of natural history, I may mention an 

 object which struck me very forcibly as I was wander- 

 ing through the Piscatorial Exhibition held in June, 

 1877, at the Westminster Aquarium. It was a case 

 of stuffed water ousels, and below them a case- of some 

 dozen or more water insects in their various stages, which 

 prey upon the ova of trout. These insects are found in the 

 bodies of water ousels on dissection, and thus the owner 

 of a trout stream who might be inclined to shoot these 

 interesting birds on the assumption that theydestroyedova, 

 is taught that they are his best friends, from the fact that 

 they destroy wholesale some of his worst enemies. 



But here I must draw this note to an end, by quoting 

 a quaint passage from old Grervase Markham's book, to 

 which I have referred on page 38, on the character of an 

 angler. He says, — 



"A skilfull Angler ought to be a generall scholler, and seene in all 

 the liberall sciences, as a grammarian, to know how either to write or 

 discourse of his art in true and fitting termes, either without affectation 

 or rudenes. Hee should have sweetness o£ speech to perswade and 

 intice others to delight in an exercise so much laudable. Hee should 

 have strength of arguments to defend and maintaine his profession 

 against envy or slander. Hee should have knowledge in the sunne, 

 moone, and starres, that by their aspects hee may guesse the season- 

 ablenesse, or unseasonablenesse of the weather, the breeding of the 

 stormes, and from what coasts the winds are ever delivered. 



"Hee should be a good knower of countries, and well used to high 

 ■wayes, that by taking the readiest pathes to every lake, brook, or 



