We have compared the peculiar delight of establishing a family link, long shrouded in mystery or attended with harassing doubts, to the angler's joy in landing a notable catch. In both cases the issue may long hang in the balance between skilful manipulation and a possible stroke of bad luck, which no skill can guard against. The fish may be reeled in or given his head without a single mistake of judgment. But who can foresee the sharp rock, the hidden snag, which cuts or entangles the line? And so, too, is skill most richly rewarded in searching for ancestors; but what can it avail against the positive wiping out of indispensable records? We recall one of these genealogical tragedies, which cast its shadow over a remarkable record of successes in tracing a number of interesting lines for a gentleman who could start us off with no more than the names and birth-places of his parents. Two lines remained which pointed back by strong evidence to European connections of the titled class. All that was needed in one case was a clue to show to which of several branches of the family in Great Britain, the first American ancestor belonged. But to this day that clue has eluded every attempt to pick it up by research here or abroad. Cases which are parallel up to this point are not uncommon. But the tragedy has yet to be told. At the colonial homestead of this ancestor we learned that his personal papers had, indeed, been preserved from generation to generation. Their last owner, a maiden lady, had carefully kept them in an old trunk, which was itself an ancient heirloom. But she had never taken the pains to examine their contents, and only a short time before our investigation brought us upon the scene, these hoary documents, after surviving the vicissitudes of seven generations, had been destroyed in a fire which reduced the old house to ashes! Who can express the sorrow of it? No finder of Captain Kidd's buried treasure could gloat over Spanish doubloons and glittering gems with half the delight with which we would have contemplated those ancient parchments. How fondly our fingers would have turned the precious pages and smoothed the creases of those yellow papers! But now no hand may touch them, no antiquarian's eye explore nor pen exploit their contents to the world! If our friend had only sought his forebears earlier, and launched us sooner upon the voyage of discovery!