Act, 1888, these bodies have, by the fourteenth section of the statute which brought them into existence, power to enforce the Rivers Pollution Prevention Act, 1876, and a council may also contribute towards the cost of a prosecution by another council. At present County Councils, with one or two exceptions, have shown no desire to put these powers into force; but this is not surprising when the amount of more pressing business to which their attention has had to be directed is borne in mind. We are hopeful that these bodies, which appear to be gradually settling to their work in a satisfactory manner, will in due time take up this important question. But it is essential that riparian proprietors, anglers, angling clubs, and all persons interested in the welfare of local waters, should urge this matter on the attention of their local representatives. Combined and persistent pressure on County Councils as bodies, and on the members of them as individual units, is absolutely necessary in order to produce an effective result. Popularly elected bodies such as these councils can hardly fail under such circumstances to set to work to put an end to a practice which is the chief danger of the rivers of England and Wales-a danger which is one not only to the pleasure and the sport of many, but-what is, after all, of greater importance to the health of the community.

If we look at the literature of angling at the present time, it shows plainly the perennial interest taken in this delightful art. Not a year passes but some new work on the subject is laid on our tables. Sometimes it is instructive, intended to show the beginner how to attain the whole art of angling. Such is the late Mr. Francis Francis's useful work on angling, and the two admirable volumes in the series now so well known as the Badminton Library. Sometimes it is of a high technical standard-a monograph on one special branch; but often it is a book partly descriptive, partly autobiographical. For it would appear as if there were a permanent charm in recording the delights and disappointment of angling, and in depicting the scenesalways attractive-in which fish have been landed or lost. The pleasure of narration appears, in fact, to be superior only to the pleasure of perusing the narrative, and we firmly believe that there are scores of men of capacity and knowledge of life who enjoy nothing better than to read for an hour the simple tales of the capture of a basket of trout in Hampshire stream or of a grilse in a Highland pool-tales

similar to those which each one of them could have penned had he been so minded, and which, though they are absolutely commonplace, have about them the attraction of the actual pursuit. For no other explanation can be given of the fact that books are read which are perfectly devoid of all literary talent, and which have nothing more to recommend them than their subject and a flavour of fresh air. From time to time there appear works of a higher standard, showing a keener insight into nature and a more accurate observation, or produced with greater literary skill. Such, for example, is-as might be expected-Mr. Andrew Lang's recent little volume of Angling Sketches,' a book of the slightest possible substance, but readable from the beginning to the end. Here is an extract which every angler will appreciate, the last lines of the chapter called A Border 'Boyhood.' For unfortunate must the fisherman be who cannot remember innumerable incidents of his early days by brook and burn which increase rather than diminish in vividness with the passing years. They are recalled by such a passage as this:

'These are the waters with which our boyhood was mainly engaged; it is a pleasure to name and number them. Memory that has lost so much, and would gladly lose so much more, brings vividly back the golden summer evenings by Tweedside, when the trout began to plash in the stillness-brings back the long lingering solitary days beneath the woods of Ashiestiel-days so lonely that they sometimes in the end begat a superstitious eeriness. One seemed forsaken in an enchanted world: one might see the two white deer flit by, bringing to us, as to Thomas Rhymer, the tidings that we must back to fairyland. Other waters we know and loved: the little salmon stream in the West that doubles through the loch, and runs a mile or twain beneath its alders, past its old Celtic battlefield, beneath the ruined shell of its feudal tower to the sea. Many a happy day we have had there, on loch or stream, with the big sea trout which have somehow changed their tastes, and today take quite different flies from the greenbody and the redbody that led them to the landing net long ago. Dear are the twin Alines, but dearer is Tweed and Ettrick, where our ancestor was drowned in a flood, and his white horse was found next day, feeding near his dead body, on a little grassy island. There is a great pleasure in trying new methods, in labouring after the delicate art of the dry fly fisher in the clear Hampshire streams, where the glassy tide flows over the waving tresses of crowsfoot below the poplar shade. But nothing can be so good as what is old, and, as far as angling goes, is practically ruined; the alternate pool and stream of the Border waters, where

and the salmon cast murmurs hard by the Wizard's grave. They are all

gone now, the old allies and tutors in the angling art—the kind gardener who baited our hooks; the good Scotch judge who gave us our first collection of flies; the friend who took us with him on his salmon-fishing expedition, and made men of us with real rods and "pirns" of ancient make. The companions of those times are scattered, and live under strange stars and in converse seasons, by troutless waters. It is no longer the height of pleasure to be half drowned in the Tweed, or lost on the hills with no luncheon in the basket. But, except for scarcity of fish, the scene is very little altered, and one is a boy again, in heart, beneath the elms of Yair, or by the gullets at Ashiestiel. However bad the sport, it keeps you young, or makes you young again, and you need not follow Ponce de Leon to the western wilderness, when in any river you knew of yore you can find the Fountain of Youth' (p. 35).

Here some of the attractions of angling are lightly and suggestively touched on: the natural beauty of the riverside, the pleasures of memory, the types of men made kinsmen by a love of their common pursuit, the interest and even the uncertainty of the sport. And when we are carried to the famous Tweed, we are brought again to the company of anglers whose names have become household words, not only among the fishermen of the Borders, but in Southern haunts -the feats piscatorial and literary of Hogg, of Stoddart, and of Russell have become classical, and will probably outlive the less robust productions of a later day. In truth, the incidents of angling are so picturesque, they touch so many of the best feelings of our nature-the love for landscape, the goodfellowship of men, both those of our own station and those of humbler degree-that a skilful writer can hardly ever fail to interest his readers. Such books as those of which this of Mr. Lang's is one of the best of recent examples, though they tell us nothing new, are certain to be of perennial interest and from time to time to find successors. For they appeal to permanent interests, not to mere passing fancies of the hour or episodes of the age; thus to go back to the days of boyhood by the Tweed is, after all, but to work on the same feelings as have been the opportunities of poets for centuries.

Of the class of angling literature which may be called technical, inasmuch as it deals with the minuter and more difficult parts of the art of angling, two notable examples have been published in recent years-Mr. Halford's work, Dry Fly Fishing,' and Mr. Pritt's North-Country Flies.' They are interesting on account of the thoroughness with which they deal with their particular subject, and because they are illustrative of the characteristics of the anglers of

the North and the South of England. In the South of England dry fly fishing has been within the last fifteen or twenty years, in some senses, almost created; at any rate, has vastly increased, and its followers have reduced fly fishing to a fine art. It has spread, indeed, even beyond its original locality, and has votaries in the Midlands.

'In Derbyshire,' writes Mr. Halford, 'a few years back, everyone used two, and many three or four, or even more flies; everyone fished down stream and fished the water. Now, hosts of anglers have invaded the district, and the trout and grayling are as shy and wary as any in the county, and what is the result? Day after day, and year after year, more of the successful anglers fish up stream with floating flies, and over rising fish only, and it is only on an occasional blustering day that one of the old school succeeds in getting a moderate bag' (p. 40).

It is only a question of time when it will be more extensively practised in the North, and it is equally certain that it will eventually spread to America and New Zealand, where trout-fishing is now becoming a recognised pastime. When trout become shy in clear and comparatively smooth water, dry fly fishing is the only means of taking them with a fly. With the increase of anglers it is impossible to prevent an increase in the wariness of fish. There is nothing, indeed, which is more clearly established than the ease with which trout may be taken when unaccustomed to artificial hues as compared with the difficulties of their capture in a stream along which the angler, week by week and day by day, wends his way. Hence the very popularity of fly fishing renders it every year a more skilful pastime, if success is to attend the efforts of the angler. It is certain that no more delicate and skilful method of capturing a created thing, no more difficult exercise, if we regard it in comparison with other physical pursuits, has ever existed than that of dry fly fishing. It is not only the nicety of the operation at the time of casting a single fly so that it alights-whatever may be the difficulties of place or wind-in a particular spot with complete certainty, and proceeds to float down over a rising trout absolutely imitative of the living insect, with wings erect and natural motion, but there is also the beautiful perfection with which the insect is imitated by the fly-dresser, and the slightness of the tackle to which it is attached. Lastly, there is the skill which is required to land a fish of some size on such delicate tackle.

The very thorough work of Mr. Halford, a complete monograph on the art of dry fly fishing, bears witness to the

nicety of this pastime. His book is a technical treatise which deals not only with what may be termed the mechanical part of the work, but with the portion of it which requires a knowledge of the habits of the trout. For example, after the fly has reached the water it is necessary that it should float along exactly like the natural insect, neither faster nor slower, nor in any other direction than would a living fly. When it does not do so, the artificial fly is technically said to be dragging; 'the meaning is that it is travelling down the stream in some degree differently to the natural insect. This can occur in one of three 'different respects:-Firstly, by the artificial fly travelling 'more rapidly than the natural fly; secondly, by its travelling more slowly; and, thirdly, by its drifting across the run of the stream, in such case leaving a more or less ' perceptible wake' (p. 82). Mr. Halford then elaborately shows in greater detail under what circumstances 'dragging is likely to occur and how it is to be prevented. This, of course, is but one point which the angler must study, but it will sufficiently show those who are not yet acquainted with dry fly fishing the extreme skill and the acute observation which are required in order to reach perfection in this fascinating and charming pursuit. It is surely not astonishing, then, that those who have made themselves masters of this craft are apt to look down on all other fishermen. There is far too much presumption of superior 'scientific knowledge and skill on the part of the modern school dry fly fishermen,' says Mr. Halford, and he of all men should know. But those who have passed through the necessary apprenticeship may well feel some pride in their perfection, which itself is an example of the ardour for outof-door sport and of the skill which is now displayed in it.

To turn to the book of Mr. Pritt-which, as we have said, illustrates very well an increasing and noticeable characteristic of angling in the North of England. This is best stated in the writer's own words ::

In one important matter, the fancy of Yorkshire anglers, indeed of anglers all over the North of England, had undergone a change during the past twenty-five years. It is now conceded that a fly dressed hacklewise is generally to be preferred to a winged imitation. The reasons for this are not far to seek, and are satisfactory. It is far more difficult to imitate a perfect insect, and afterwards to impart to it a semblance of life in or on the water, than it is to produce something which is sufficiently near a resemblance of an imperfectly developed insect struggling to attain the surface of the stream. Tront undoubtedly