to distinguish the natural from the artificial

fly.

HAL. This, I think, always happens after a fish has been hooked with an artificial fly. He becomes cautious, and is seldom caught that year, at least with the same means in the same pool: but I dare say that fish might be taken with a natural fly; or, what is better, two upon the hook.

POIET.-Pray try him.

HAL.-I am no great artist at this kind of angling, but I will for once try my fortune, though it is hardly fair play; and it is rather to endeavour to recover your tackle, than for the sake of the fish; for this method I seldom practise, and never encourage.

POIET.-Pray make no apologies for the trial. Such a fish-certainly a monster, for this river-should be caught, by fair means, if possible, but caught, by any means.

HAL.-You lost that fish, and you overrate his size, as you will see, if I have good fortune. I put my live flies on the hook with some regret and some disgust. I will not employ another person to be my minister

of cruelty, as I remember a lady of fashion once did, who was very fond of fishing for perch, and who employed her daughter, a little girl of nine years of age, to pass the hook through the body of the worm! Now there is a good wind, and the fish has just taken a natural fly. I shall drop the flies, if possible, within a few inches of his nose. He has risen. He is caught! I must carry him down stream to avoid the bed of weeds above. I now have him on fair ground, and he fights with vigour. Fortunately, my silk worm gut is very strong, for he is not a fish to be trifled with. He begins to be tired; prepare the net. We have him safe, and see your link hangs to his lower jaw: the hook had struck the cartilage on the outside of the bow, and the fly, probably, was scarcely felt by him..

PHYS.-I am surprised! That fish evidently had discovered that the artificial fly was a dangerous bait, yet he took the natural fly which was on a hook, and when the silk worm gut must have been visible.

HAL.-I do not think he saw either the gut or the hook. In very bright weather and water, I have known very shy fish refuse even a hook baited with the natural fly, scared probably by some appearance of hook or gut. The vision of fishes when the surface is not ruffled is sufficiently keen. I have seen them rise at gnats so small as to be scarcely visible to my eye.

PHYS.--You just now said, that a fish pricked by the hook of an artificial fly would not usually take it again that season.

HAL.-I cannot be exact on that point: I have known a fish that I have pricked retain his station in the river, and refuse the artificial fly, day after day, for weeks together; but his memory may have been kept awake by this practice, and the recollection seems local and associated with surrounding objects; and if a pricked trout is chased into another pool, he will, I believe, soon again take the artificial fly. Or if the objects around him are changed, as in Autumn, by the decay of weeds, or by their being cut,

D

the same thing happens; and a flood, or a rough wind, I believe, assists the fly fisher, not merely by obscuring the vision of the fish, but, in a river much fished, by changing the appearance of their haunts: large trouts almost always occupy particular stations, under, or close to, a large stone or tree; and, probably, most of their recollected sensations are connected with this dwelling.

PHYS.-I think I understand you, that the memory of the danger and pain does not last long, unless there is a permanent sensation with which it can remain associated,such as the station of the trout; and that the recollection of the mere form of the artificial fly, without this association, is eva

nescent.

ORN.-You are diving into metaphysics; yet I think, in fowling, I have observed that the memory of birds is local. A woodcock, that has been much shot at and scared in a particular wood, runs to the side where he has usually escaped, the moment he hears the dogs; but if driven into a new wood, he

seems to lose his acquired habits of caution, and becomes stupid.

POIET. This great fish, that you have just caught, must be nearly of the weight I assigned to him.

HAL.-O no; he is, I think, above 5lbs. but not 6lbs.; but we can form a more correct opinion by measuring him, which I can easily do, the but of my rod being a measure. He measures, from nose to fork, a very little less than twenty-four inches, and, consequently, upon the scale which is appropriate to well-fed trouts, should weigh 5lbs. 10oz.-which, within an ounce, I doubt not, is his weight.

PHYS.-O, I see you take the mathematical law, that similar solids are to each other in the triplicate ratio of one of their dimensions.

HAL.-You are right.

PHYS. But I think you are below the mark, for this appears to me an extraordinarily thick fish.

D 2