the dandy, became a soldier and perished magnificently before his day in some frontier scuffle he had the dash of a gallant trout about him. The walrus, as we called little Gregson, because of his huge moustache and solemn bearing, ought to have been the gudgeon. He got taken on at Christie's, and dabbles a good deal in Art criticism, taking himself over-seriously. Large Longleat became an Army Contractor and promoted companies. His grin, and those hard eyes, proclaimed him a jack, when he was young. He is now a pike, as his admirers will admit. Cecil Rhodes was much taken with him, and sent a lot of good things his way, which he did not let slip. You, my kind roundeyed Sir, with the cocked hair, made me wonder if you were ever a rock whiting. Painful Higgins, you have assuredly the aspect of a blenny. Forbes, you long-bodied rowing champion, you Ireland scholar and king of good fellows, you are a salmon even to your love of prawns and self-sacrifice. I could easily believe that your flesh would be pink, if some Shylock carved out a pound of it. There is no fish that swims, but has his counterpart in the human brotherhood. Even the ladies have their likenesses in the

watery world. Do I not know the pretty dapper pilot fish? The matronly bream? Even alas! the grave-eyed sting ray from Madras, and the Hag (Myxine) from the German Ocean? The last, one is not surprised to find, are "frequently found buried in the abdominal cavity of other fishes, especially gadoids, into which they penetrate to feed upon their flesh. When caught they secrete a thick glutinous slime in incredible quantities, and are therefore considered by fishermen to be a great nuisance, seriously interfering with the fishing in localities where they abound." But ladies are less like fishes than birds, as a rule, and it is only the coarser sex who can be successfuly depicted in the aquarium.

Most men will assure one confidently that dace can easily be caught on some one particular fly. A lieutenant in the Artillery caught three dozen, magnified into five dozen, on one blue upright, some years ago. He proposed to repeat that feat, but not a dace would look at his lure, though he flung it where their circles intersected like the diagram of first proposition of Euclid. An expert angler from Evans' Bank pledged his honour upon the virtues of the Golden

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Sedge, as a never failing recipe.

Alas! when he forsook the counters of Mammon for the water edge, the fly was as fruitless as if it had been a champagne cork. Could it have been that the name sounded sweet to the fiscal ear? Young Mr. Attenborough, F.R.C.P., was positive that red palmers and Cinnamons were the only cue. We flecked half-a-mile of stream with these flocules, but never a dace arose until after six o'clock, when they will rise to anything in reason. It is vain to generalize from one successful bout, and the mid-day fly, which will be certain to catch them has not yet been hatched in Redditch, or the North Country. This view is not gloomy, but merely sober. On the other hand, have we not known the fitful little creatures relish April dainties in July? and October flies in August? The fact is that the dace has a fine queazy taste, a niceness of appetite, and a whimsical love of strange dishes. An impromptu feather-fly, cut out with pocket nail-scissors, and whipped on with a frayed hat ribbon, is sometimes not unwelcome. Even so, fastidious guests at an aspiring little dinner will ask for some familiar savoury, which is newdubbed with a mock French name and clapt

into the entremets, whereas in nude English terms they would think it indecent even to mention that familiar viand. Indeed, the rogueries of a good hostess will suggest methods to the contemplative seeker after dace, which only need leisure and a bold application. Here is all fulness, ye brave, to reward you. Whip and despair not. last fly may give the dace to the bait-can.

The

But if they all fail, whip a gentle on a No. 12 crystal hook as if he were a fly a chrysalis gentle will do. But if you are in haste for bait it saves time to begin with this

course.

CHAP. IX-Perches and Plants.

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MONG other distinguished literary anglers we must not forget the poet Pope, who writes about Lord Cobham's house,

(Stowe) that he spent every hour there but dinner and night "fishing, no politics, no cards, nor much reading." What a golden recipe for that asthmatic venomous great man! If he had spent as many weeks there as he tarried days he need not have died at fifty-six of the asthma. But he angled too late, both for his disease and his severities, to obtain much relief. The Dunciad, in its last recension was being typed. It was the year 1743, the poet's last year of life, for he died in May, 1744, arguing to the last for the immortality of his great crippled soul. Did he catch little pond carp or what? Did he soon weary of the sport? The rod must have tired his delicate, white little hands, so apt and tireless with rods of another kind. A lake, a river, (with an ornamental bridge) were to be found among clipped yews, rec