much of plenty; and though your satisfaction be not as ready as your wishes, yet you must hope still, that with perseverance you shall reap the fulness of your harvest with contentment. Then he must be full of love both to his pleasure and his neighbour to his pleasure, which otherwise will be irksome and tedious and to his neighbour, that he never give offence in any particular, nor be guilty of any general destruction: then he must be exceeding patient, and neither vex nor excruciate himself with losses or mischances, as in losing the prey when it is almost in the hand, or by breaking his tools by ignorance or negligence; but with pleased sufferance amend errors, and think mischances instructions to better carefulness."

In regard to the antiquity of angling, it has been traced by some to the time of Seth, who is asserted to have taught it to his sons; and so highly have others esteemed the knowledge of the art, as to maintain that its rules and maxims were engraven on those pillars by which an acquaintance with music, the mathematics, and other branches of useful knowledge, was preserved by God's appointment from extinction in the days of Noah. It is frequently alluded to in the holy Scriptures; as in Isaiah, xix. 8, "The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish ;" so in the prophet Habakkuk, i. 15, "They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag; therefore they rejoice and are glad." We

deem it unnecessary to multiply quotations from ancient authors, whether sacred or profane; but shall rest satisfied with pointing out, at the close of this portion of our volume, the principal works on angling which have appeared in our own language, and in relation to the practice of the art in British streams.

As expert angling never was and never will be successfully taught by rule, but is almost entirely the result of assiduous and long-continued practice, we purpose being very brief in our general disquisition on the subject. We shall commence by stating our belief that fly-fishing, by far the most elegant and interesting branch of the art, ought not to be regarded exclusively as an art of imitation. It no doubt depends on deception, which usually proceeds on the principle of one thing being successfully substituted in the likeness of another; but Bacon's distinctive definitions of simulation and dissimulation place the subject in a truer light. As simulation consists in the adoption or affectation of what is not, while dissimulation consists in the careful concealment of what really is-the one being a positive, the other rather a negative act-90 the great object of the fly-fisher is to dissimulate in such a manner as to prevent his expected prey from detecting the artificial nature of his lure, without troubling himself by a vain effort to simulate or assume, with his fly, the appearance of any individual or specific form of insect life. There is, in truth, little or no connection between the art of angling and the science of entomology; and there

fore the success of the angler, in by far the greater proportion of cases, does not depend on the resemblance which subsists between his artificial fly and the natural insect. This statement is no doubt greatly at variance with the expressed principles of all who have deemed fishing worthy of consideration, from the days of Isaiah and Theocritus, to those of Carrol and Bainbridge. But we are not the less decidedly of opinion, that in nine instances out of ten a fish seizes upon an artificial fly as upon an insect or moving creature sui generis, and not on account of its exact and successful resemblance to any accustomed and familiar object.

If it is not so, let us request to be informed upon what principle of imitative art the different varieties of salmon-fly can be supposed to bear the most distant resemblance to any species of dragonfly, to imitate which we are frequently told they are intended? Certainly no perceptible similarity in form or aspect exists between them, all the species of dragonfly, with the exception of one or two of the sub-genus Calepterix, being characterized by clear, lace-like, pellucid wings, entirely unadorned by those fantastic gaudy colours, borrowed from the peacock and other "birds of gayest plume," which are made to distinguish the supposed resemblance. Besides, the finest salmon-fishing is frequently in mild weather during the cooler seasons of the year, in autumn and early spring, several months either before or after any dragonfly has become visible on the face of the waters, as it is a summer insect, and rarely makes its appearance in the perfect state

until the month of June. If they bear no resemblance to each other in form or colour, how much more unlike must they seem, when, instead of being swept like lightning down the current, as a real one would be, the artificial fly is seen crossing and recrossing every stream and torrent, with the agility of an otter, and the strength of an alligator? Or darting with regular jerks, and often many inches under water, up smooth continuous flows, where all the dragonflies on earth-with St. George to bootcould not maintain their place a single second! Now, as it is demonstrable that the artificial fly generally used for salmon, bears no resemblance, except in size, to any living one; that the only tribe which, from their respective dimensions, it may be supposed to represent, does not exist in the winged state during the period when the imitation is most generally and most successfully practised; and if they did, that their habits and natural powers totally disenable them from being at any time seen under such circumstances as would give a colour to the supposition of the one being ever mistaken for the other; may we not fairly conclude that, in this instance at least, the fish proceed upon other grounds, and are deceived by an appearance of life and motion, rather than by a specific resemblance to any thing which they had previously been in the habit of capturing? What natural insect do the large flies, at which sea-trout rise so readily, resemble? These, as well as gilse and salmon, frequently take the lure far within the bounds of the salt-water mark; and yet naturalists know that

no such thing as a salt-water fly exists, or at least has ever been discovered by their researches. Indeed no true insect inhabits the sea. What species

are imitated by the palmer, or by three fourths of the dressed flies in common use? An artificial fly can, at the best, be considered only as the representative of a natural one which has been drowned, as it is impossible to imitate the dancing or hovering flight of the real insect over the surface of the stream; and, even with that restricted idea of its resemblance to nature, the likeness must be scarcely perceptible, owing to the difference of motion, and the great variety of directions in which the angler drags his flies, according to the nature and special localities of the current, and the prevailing direction of the wind.

The same observations apply, with almost equally few exceptions, to bait-fishing. The minnow is fastened upon swivels, which cause it to revolve upon its axis with such rapidity, that it loses every vestige of its original appearance; and in angling with the par-tail, one of the most killing lures for large trout, the bait consists of the nether half of a small fish, mangled and mis-shapen, and in every point of view divested of its natural form.

Fly-fishing has been compared, though by a somewhat circuitous mode of reasoning, to sculpture. It proceeds upon a few simple principles, and the theory is easily acquired, although it may require long and severe labour to become a great master in the art. Yet it is needless to encompass it with difficulties which have no existence in reality,