80 ‘THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
THE ANGLER AS A NATURALIST. 
Mr. C. Tuackeray’s Lecture. 
Mr. C. Tuackeray lectured to the members on March 7 in 
the Royal Society’s Rooms on the subject, ‘‘The Angler as. 
a Naturalist.’? The lecturer pointed out that the angler to 
be successful must be a naturalist, as the original inhabitants 
of Australia were. If a sportsman brought to bear upon his. 
hunting the faculty of observation as a naturalist, he would ~ 
be of much more use to the community and himself than at 
present his class was. The hunting instinct was a human 
animal possession, and if allied with a feeling of sportsman- 
ship, and tinctured with the skilled observation of the nature 
lover, indulgence in it would be made very enjoyable. People 
were too often inclined to ascribe to the fickle goddess the 
success of certain anglers, but when that success was analysed 
closely, it would be found that it was the possession of the 
man who pitted his observing brain against the fish he sought 
to capture. All naturalists developed the hunting spirit. 
The entomologist used his net, catching-boxes and pliers, 
‘the pursuer of big game took the moving camera into the 
wilds to get graphic photographs of the savage animals in 
their native element; but the angler, equipped with rod and 
tackle, waders, box of flies and landing net, was even more 
of the sportsman than these, as his game was in its own 
exclusive element. Even the ornithologist with his climbing 
irons, nets, bird-lime and traps, found it necessary to study 
the movements of his quarry and then pit his brains against 
the creatures that moved in an element equally as inaccessible 
to man as the water. 
The angler was unfortunately not often enough an artist, 
and the sea and the river in this respect were still an almost 
unopened book. A great field for the artist existed in the 
sea and river, and in the depictment on canvas with paint, or 
even on paper with crayons from life was a neglected section 
of the Australian art life. He had prepared, although not 
an artist, some rough crayon drawings of a few of our fish, 
which would, he hoped, stimulate artistically inclined mem- 
bers to take up in earnest the task of drawing or modelling 
fish from the life. 
The lecturer was aided by some capital slides of fish, ang- 
ling practice, and fishing resorts, lent to him by Mr. David 
G. Stead, Naturalist to the Fisheries’ Department, and the 
State Tourist Department. Amongst the most interesting of 
these were pictures showing anglers casting with fly and bait, 
others seeking long beach-worms for bait, a process whiclx 
