140 NOTES -ON FISH AND FISHING. 



" Oh back to their shelves those books consign, 

 And look to your rod and reel and line, 



Make fast the feather'd hook ! 

 Then away from the town, with its hum of life, 

 Where the air with worry and work is rife, 



To the charms of the meadow brook." 



Yes — " Away from the town." Those best know the 

 joys of a fly-fishing holiday, who are perforce — 



" Long in populous cities pent, 

 Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,'' 



and when their holiday time comes hie them far away 

 from the 



"Fumum et opes, strepiturnque Bomse," 



whether their Rome be London, Birmingham, Manchester, 

 or some populous place taken cognizance of by that most 

 statistical of public functionaries, the Registrar-General. 

 What a blessing it is that a few hours' journey will land us 

 in almost any direction, north, south, east, or west, by the 

 banks of the trout stream we have fixed on ; and what a 

 blessing it is that thousands in the course of a year can 

 thus find recreation, and recruit both body and mind in 

 the innocent amusement of fly-fishing. 



As to the Art of Ply-fishing, more has been said and 

 written on this particular branch of sport than on any 

 other ; and none have given rise to more " vexed ques- 

 tions" than this. The proverbial differing of doctors is 

 as nothing to the differing of fly-fishers, both as regards 

 theory and practice. Fly-fishing may almost be described 

 as an art without any fundamental rules ; I mean rules 



