Gay’s passionate love for angling is well known; it was his principal occupation in the summer at Amesbury; and “the late excellent John Tobin, author of the Honey Moon, was an ardent angler.”  Among heroes, Trajan was fond of angling.  Nelson was a good fly-fisher, and continued the pursuit even with his left hand; and, says the author, “I have known a person who fished with him at Merton, in the Wandle.  Dr. Paley was so much attached to this amusement, that when the Bishop of Durham inquired of him when one of his most important works would be finished, he said, with great simplicity and good-humour, ’My lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over.’”—­Then we have a poetical description of river scenery, till two of the party arrive at the following conclusions:—­

I have already admitted the danger of analyzing, too closely, the moral character of any of our field sports; yet I think it cannot be doubted that the nervous system of fish, and cold-blooded animals in general, is less sensitive than that of warm-blooded animals.  The hook usually is fixed in the cartilaginous part of the mouth, where there are no nerves; and a proof that the sufferings of a hooked fish cannot be great is found in the circumstance, that though a trout has been hooked and played for some minutes, he will often, after his escape with the artificial fly in his mouth, take the natural fly, and feed as if nothing had happened; having apparently learnt only from the experiment, that the artificial fly is not proper for food.  And I have caught pikes with four or five hooks in their mouths, and tackle which they had broken only a few minutes before; and the hooks seemed to have had no other effect than that of serving as a sort of sauce piquante, urging them to seize another morsel of the same kind.—­The advocates for a favourite pursuit never want sophisms to defend it.  I have even heard it asserted, that a hare enjoys being hunted.  Yet I will allow that fly-fishing, after your vindication, appears amongst the least cruel of field sports.

We must, however, confine ourselves to a few colloquial extracts from the practical portion of the volume; as

Flies on the Wandle, &c.

Orn.—­Surely the May-fly season is not the only season for day-fishing in this river? [the Wandle.]—­Hal. Certainly not.  There are as many fish to be taken, perhaps, in the spring fishing; but in this deep river they are seldom in good season till the May-fly has been on, and a fortnight hence they will be still better than even now.  In September there may be good fish taken here; but the autumnal flies are less plentiful in this river than the spring flies—­Phys, Pray tell me what are the species of fly which take in these two seasons.—­Hal.  You know that trout spawn or deposit their ova, &c. in the end of the autumn or beginning of winter, from the middle of November till the beginning of January,