Thus writes Mr. H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, a distinguished authority on angling. We fear, however, that an examination of the “gentle craft” will scarcely justify the assertion; for the fact cannot be gainsaid that to kill fish for mere _amusement_ is to gratify one’s own pleasure at the cost of another being’s pain, and that, regarded from a moral standpoint, it will not materially affect the case to plead that the fisherman is “contemplative,” or that in the pursuit of his pastime he is brought into touch with the softening influences of nature. Unfortunately, as far as his sport (which is the only point in question) is concerned, there is no sign of this softening tendency on _him_. Contemplative he may be (in the intervals between “rises” or “bites”), but his contemplation has apparently not taken that introspective turn which would seem to be most needed. He may be gentle--in _some_ relations of life; but in the matter of impaling live-bait and hooking fishes his gentleness is of a worse than dubious quality. One would have thought that a sense of humour would withhold fishermen from making these ludicrous claims to virtues in which, _qua_ fishermen, they are very signally deficient. “There are unquestionably,” says Leigh Hunt, “many amiable men among sportsmen, who, as the phrase is, would not hurt a fly, that is to say, on a window; at the end of a string the case is altered.” The stories told by anglers of the alleged “insensibility” of fish--how a hooked salmon that has just broken away will sometimes return to the bait--do not prove very much; for that fish are less intelligent and less sensitive than warm-blooded animals is no excuse for torturing them to the extent of their feeling. And it is evident, on the showing of the fishermen themselves, that the process of “playing” a large fish is a very cruel one, since it means gradually and mercilessly wearing down the strength of the victim during a desperate struggle prolonged sometimes for hours. Reading, for example, such a passage as the following, taken from Dr. Hamilton’s book on “Fly-Fishing,” one marvels at the mood which can find enjoyment in so barbarous a sport: