Well, the fish in this country--it is of Ireland that I am speaking--have contracted these habits. Offer as bait to one of our fish anything extraordinary, and he will swallow it, even if it is not good, simply from love of change, from curiosity. This sentiment in the last century made all our great ladies enjoy going to the _porcherons_ so much to eat the _petits plats canailles_ there. This is why we are such a revolutionary people! The trout and the salmon in the Shannon are not like that. If at eight o’clock you offer them a fly which they adore, but which generally they only eat at noon, instead of being seduced by the novelty, as our French fish would be, instead of allowing themselves to be tempted by the earliness of the season, they would turn round with a whisk of the tail, and you would not see another of them. Your advances, although well meant, shock them, because you have broken the usual rules, and they perceive in your action an attack against their respectability. The English quite understand these sentiments. This is why, just as Baron Brisse composed a daily _menu_, to the great assistance of his readers, so they formed albums of artificial flies, which one has only to turn over to see what a trout or salmon who respected himself, should take not only every day of the year, but also every hour of each day. This idea appeared so sublime to me that I bought one of these albums; it cost me five pounds, and its information has never aided me in catching a single French fish. But the English are more fortunate, or more skilful, than I am. Every morning, at dawn, I see the tenants or owners of fishing wending their way towards the river, consulting their albums. Two men are waiting for them seated in a punt moored to a tree. They begin by a long discussion as to which fly it would be most advisable to offer as the dish of the day. In order to settle this, they carefully examine the flies that are visible on the river. A still more certain means, when it is practicable, is to procure a trout, and to open its stomach to see what it has eaten for its first breakfast. When once their choice is made, they dress four or five hooks; one is fastened to the line, the others are placed round the hat ready for use. I ought to have mentioned that fly-fishing requires a special costume. It seems to me that it is absolutely necessary to wear knickerbockers, and for the complete suit to be of homespun, with yellow or green squares, the same sort of thing that we see the English wear from time to time in the opera amongst us--but not over here!