recommend angling as a manly exercise, as physically hard
in some of its aspects as any other field sport. During the lifetime
of those of us who will no more see middle age this recreation has
become actually popular, and it is generally supposed that the
multiplication a hundredfold of rod-and-line fishermen in a generation
is explained by the cheaper and easier modes of locomotion, the
increase of cheap literature pertaining to the sport, and the
establishment of a periodical press devoted to it amongst other forms
of national recreation. These reasons are undoubtedly admissible. Yet
I venture to add another, namely, the great and beneficial movement
which has opened the eyes of men and women to the importance of
physical exercise.

When the young men who had in their boyhood been taught to regard
almost every form of recreation as a sin to be guarded against and
repented of, were taught another doctrine, a new impulse was given to
cricket, football, and all manner of athletics, and angling was quickly
discovered by many to offer exercise in variety, and to carry with it
charms of its own. To-day it is therefore so popular that anglers have
to protect themselves against one another if they would prevent the
depletion of lakes and rivers, and salmon and trout streams are quoted
as highly remunerative investments.

Let us see, however, where exercise worthy of the name is found--the
inquiry will at the same time indicate the nature of the fascinations
which to not a few good people are wholly incomprehensible, if, indeed,
they are not a mild form of lunacy. We may take for granted the
antiquity of the sport, though probably the first anglers had an eye to
nothing nobler than the pot. Angling has never been worth following as
an industry, for one of the first lessons learned by the rod fisherman
is that there are superior devices for filling a basket if that alone
is the object. "Because I like it," is the least troublesome reply to
one who asks you why you will go a-fishing. Happy he who can go a
little further and aver, "Because I find it the most entrancing of
sports." And with equally sound sense may it be urged by old and young
alike, "Because it is splendid exercise."

Angling in truth is often made much severer than it need be. The
American fishing-men, in their instinctive search for notions,
discovered long ago that the rods which they had copied from us were
too long and heavy, and the necessary