boasted that they understood them, as Apollonius, Tyanæus, Melampus, Tiresias, Thales and others."

Then this: "The fish Scarus, when he has swallowed the angler's hook, his fellows all crowd about him and gnaw the line in pieces; and if by chance, one be got into the leap or weel, the others present him their tayls on the outside, which he holding fast with his teeth, they after that manner disengage and draw him out."

Here someone asked what the Scarus is, or was, and there was a general hunt among the dictionaries. Ekápos, a fish, which chews the cud, according to Aristotle. Pliny adds that the Emperor Claudius brought it from the seas of Asia Minor to Ostia and Campania. Horace gives it to the uppermost rooms at feasts. Martial says that the Romans ate only its entrails (xiii 84), and woodcock-wise, as some use red mullets.

"Visceribus bonus est, cætera vile sapit."

These we traced with the aid of Gallus, but not a jot or tittle did we get nearer to a true knowledge of the fascinating Scarus, and presently the reader began again :

"Mullets, when one of their companions

is engaged, cross the line over their back and with a fin they have there, indented like a saw, cut and saw it asunder."

"Halt! I thought mullets were smooth." But a brisk young man, who had spent weeks angling for grey ones with macaroni, off Chesil beach, hastily assured the company that they have a four-spined prickly dorsal fin. "And did they saw at your line, when you hooked one of their number?" The young man smiled very disdainfully and waved a deprecating hand. Mullet had evidently sawn at his heart strings, for he seemed struck seasonably dumb for a time, and then answered cautiously that mullet are too shy for a man to observe. They all swim away if one looks over at them-which is true perhaps in some cases the illfavoured ones. I have reason to believe that mullets never are, by my friend nor by any other fair dealing angler, "engaged," at least when they are in schools. The only mullet which falls a prey to the hopeful macaronist is a kind of rogue mullet, a morose bachelor, who has from levity or unsocial habits been banished from serrated society, and dwells moodily and recklessly apart. Our particular friend had never "en

gaged" even a mullet of this lower individualist type, I am persuaded. Until an angler of undoubted veracity shall have caught several mullets together and observed the port, bearing and actions of his company, I shall prefer to believe in the dorsal charity of the mullet and will not fish for him with a line I greatly value, lest he should saw it per alium asunder with his four-toothed fin.

But while we are about fish stories let us notice Plutarch's tale about Anthony and Cleopatra at Alexandria, which was always a great place for angling, in fact its headquarters for centuries.

Shakespeare's Octavius speaks of the craft as akin to Alexandrine luxury.

"From Alexandria

This is the news; He fishes, drinks and wastes
The lamps of night in revel."*

and again Cleopatrat

"Give me mine angle; we'll to the river: there,

My musick playing far off, I will betray

Tawny-finned fishes; my bended hook shall pierce

Their slimy jaws; and, as I draw them up,

I'll think them every one an Anthony,

And say, ah, ha! you're caught.

Char.

'Twas merry, when

* Anthony and Cleopatra, i. 4.

† A. ii., s. 5.

You wager'd on your angling; when your diver
Did hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he

With fervency drew up.

The reference of course is to Plutarch's Anthony, where Cleopatra appears as luring her mailed Bacchus to the gentle craft. He being an ungentle and imperious Latin was impatient and unsuccessful, and at last in despair ordered a diver to put the fishes already taken upon his hook. The merry queen affected not to notice his villainy but sent her diver to fix a big salt fish to Anthony's hook. To soften his chagrin she told him prettily that his catch was rather a city, a province, or a kingdom, than a fish. Thus the "burgonet of men" was outwitted by the fair angler.

The Romans, whether of the Republic or of the Empire, hardly attained to the type of mind which can enter into this delicate sport. Their period of work was rather by sheer strength and swiftness than by the light touch and measured strike of your true disciple. Indeed it is notorious the Latin authors viewed fish chiefly as culinary material-but of this anon.

Our next chapter must contain a few most practical hints upon the angler's outfit.

CHAPTER V-Outfits.

T

HE angler's outfit! But few of us have our possessions under control of the will. "Why in the name of Dagon have you such a gorgeous or such an ugly rod, so queer a creel or so unwieldy a winch?" you ask of a friend. "Hush man! It was my father's and he is now with God," is his answer; or "Euphemia gave it to me on my birthday;" or "I broke my old rod at Scrambleton Parva and had to buy the best they had at the saddler's." And so ordinary persons, who love an aroma of sentiment in all that they have, who at the lowest are too generously frugal to waste their goods, get things about them which are not of choice. Epictetus' division of phenomena into my business and not my business is not so stoically simple as it sounds, for our very choice is hedged, walled and boxed into some narrow compass, and we count ourselves happy if we have any alternative at all. Possession is a fine art and a morality ("Possessions are an awful bore

too.