114 SALMON AND TROUT. 
ambition meet in the presence of beauty to try who is the best 
man. From this category no one who has watched the keen 
interest with which the spoils and incidents of the day’s chase 
are discussed at the dinner table, and the number and magni- 
tude of each man’s ‘bag’ appraised, can except the ‘knights of 
the angle.’ There are indeed already not a few angling cham- 
pions of the gentler sex who now enter the lists, especially 
as fly-fishers, and amongst whom the fair daughters of a well- 
known noble Duke have acquired enviable fame. 
We are not all, however, so lucky as to have a salmon 
river at our door, and I have often thought, watching some 
modern Dame Juliana punt fishing under the dip of a Thames 
chestnut tree in August, or later in the autumn sending her 
spinning bait skimming into the foam below Hurley weir, how 
much of pleasure, now lost to most of us, is gained by the man 
whose wife takes heartily to fishing or hunting or whatever other 
field sport he is devoted to. In this way she becomes not only 
his helpmate at home, but his ‘chum’ and true comrade when 
on his rambles by flood and field, or, rifle in hand, mounting 
the ‘imminent deadly breach’ which is shortly to witness the 
campaign against chamois or red deer. 
Not that shooting is a sport by any means so naturally 
fitted to women as fishing. Their figure makes the handling 
of the gunstock always rather awkward, and the recoil is some- 
times apt—unless very light charges are used—to be dan- 
gerous. But to fishing there is no drawback, unless, indeed, 
it be the petticoats with which some thick-ankled leader of 
fashion in bygone times has managed to cramp and disfigure 
one of the prettiest parts of the human form. No skirts will 
vex the tameless ankles of our women of the future. Already 
there is a marked and healthy improvement visible in the 
length of the dress, and women need no longer draggle about 
behind them a ridiculous and often muddy train, which if it 
does not do duty for a road-sweeper cannot certainly be shown 
to subserve any other useful purpose. 
The influence of dress has been recognised by many philo- 
