again that pleasant sensation of a something tugging to be free, and splashing and dashing about as well as it can. And now we come to a deep dip in the banks and a waterfall, with a dark deep pool into which the water tumbles and foams, making eddies and tiny whirlpools ere it escapes below. Here is a place where more than one speckled beauty ought to come to grass. And sure enough the first cast brings up a couple of hungry youngsters who have been on the feed and are looking out for any unwary fly that touches the surface. Both come on at once and both are hooked. Shall we get them in? The tailer first if you can. There! that one is in the net, now for the other. Carefully, or you may lose both. A judicious dip of the net and there he is too!—a brace of “ herring size." So the basket becomes heavier and the hours glide by unnoticed, and the angler returns to his haunt, happy in fishing chat and tales of yore. In this kind of fishing it is needless to say the tackle has much to do with the sport. The lightest possible is the best. On some waters the cast is of single horsehair and this at times does wonders. I was once fishing on a lake where trout were very abundant. It was June and fine weather. Before we had been afloat long a calm set in and no ripple broke the mirror surface of the water. Around our boat and all over the lake trout were rising in quantities. It was utterly hopeless to try to capture them with the ordinary lake flies-or indeed it might seem with any artificial lure. However, I had a cast of single horsehair with some very fine hackle flies on it, and I determined to try these, dry, over a fish or two. The result was pleasing. They came at the flies by twos and threes, and I had a basket of trout filled to overflowing, on a day when one would have deemed it wiser to have gone home.

Trout fishing from a boat is by some anglers despised, but a breezy day spent round the edges of the reeds in a large lake is often productive of good sport. There is not needed the accuracy and delicacy in casting required in fishing the stream, nor is there any difficulty in landing the fish, provided the weed beds are avoided. But, nevertheless it is pleasant to be out on the water, and rocked by the gentle zephyrs that ripple the surface of the lake and at the same time bring the fish to the rise.

Perhaps the most sport-yielding of all the salmonidæ is the white trout, or sea trout as he is commonly called. These fish may be caught from half-a-pound in weight up to seven or eight and even twelve and fifteen pounds. The two to four pound fish give excellent play when taken on light but good tackle. Having very delicate mouths they need careful handling, and when hooked they show great activity, flashing their silvery scales in the air, as they jump three or four times in quick succession from their watery domain, as if to look round and discover the cause of this unpleasant pricking in the lips. When the river comes down bankfull the white trout may be expected to ascend, and as the water fines down good baskets may be made. On lakes they will take best in the roughest weather and when the flies would seem to a beginner to be imperceptible in the trough and on the crests of the wavelets. Another method of angling for these fish, but one I have never tried, is trolling with the tail of a silver eel, in the salt water at the mouth of a fresh water stream. In this way, I am assured, some very fine fish are secured, and although the fly fisherman will hardly care for the tamer sport of trolling, yet something is made up for by the size of the fish captured in this way.

For those who are within reach of a suitable coast, sea fishing will afford a pleasant diversion at times, when fresh water fishing, at least for trout and salmon, is impossible. Besides the ordinary deep line and long line fishing, there are various modes of capturing the denizens of "the briny" which are less commonplace. In flat tidal estuaries, where at low tide shallow pools and channels alone contain any water, the art of skate spearing may be practised. The skate-and often plaice-are seen lying on the sandy bottom, and a barbed spear attached to a long pole is deftly driven at them by the marksman as he stands upon the gunwale at the bow of the boat, prepared for "either of three courses "a hit, a miss, or a ducking should he lose his balance and find himself precipitated into the sea. This pastime can only be pursued in the brightest and warmest weather, when the fish appear to be basking in the heat.

Another and decidedly an exciting pursuit is netting grey mullet. This, too, must be pursued in fine warm weather, when the fish will be seen showing their dorsal fins as they float on the top of the water, sometimes in large numbers, at the land end of some little bay at low water. These fish are very timid and easily frightened, and their movements in the water are swift as lightning. Should they catch the slightest glimpse of boat or man they are off into deep water and safety. In approaching them, therefore, the greatest caution is necessary, and it requires no slight skill to spread the net at the end of the bay in which the fish are seen, to discolour the water so that they shall not in their flight detect the meshes of the net, and to quickly disturb them when all is ready. If luck attends the fisherman he has a lively time for a few minutes, as the mullet lash the

water or, if they escape the mesh, leap high over its spreading folds and seek safety in the deep.

Yet one other kind of sea-fishing, trolling for pollock finds much favour with fishermen. Here, as for white trout, the silver eel is used as a bait; or, and this lasts longer and requires therefore less renewing, the common fresh water eel of small size, skinned up to an inch from his nose, and with the hook, a large one, put through his mouth and out where the skin ends. With this bait, on a roughish evening as the sun sinks to rest, many pollock may at times be captured round the rocks and rocky islands of our coasts. Some of these fish reach a great weight, but six or seven pounders will give plenty of "pull" to the man at the rod.

So by sea and on land the pursuer of the gentle craft may find abundance of pastime in many varying ways; and if, as often happens, he is interested in the habits of the fish he captures and is an observer of Nature, with which he spends as many hours alone and undisturbed, he will be furnishing his mind and memory with endless pleasing matters which escape the observations of the superior beings who consider fishing a sort of craze.

HERMIT.

WHAT Country amusement is more enjoyable than shooting, with all its accessories of dogs and guns, and gillies and keepers, and jovial friends and health-giving exercise and breathless excitement, and good and bad luck, and big and small bags, and all that goes to make up the gunner's joy. For the title of shooting is not to be confined to the mere going out for a few hours on the moor or to the well-stocked covert, lazily to let off a pair of guns, and languidly to return home again. He who only shoots thus, misses the greater part of the delights of the pastime. For these delights may be said to extend almost through the year for anyone who lives in the country and loves the sport. Are there not the dogs to work, and the younger ones to break; the nesting season to supply amusement in the spring; the rearing to inspect as summer draws on; the rabbits to young keep down as the green crops advance; the working of the dogs over the newly-mown fields to find out the lie of the coveys and their number? These matters are too often left to keepers and their assistants who attend to them or not-as they see fit. The days of hunting for birds with dogs are not altogether, though largely, gone, and it may be hoped they will revive. What is a prettier sight than the working of a pair of pointers or setters?