A river that runs into a large lake affords, at its junction with the lake, by far the best place for continuous angling, particularly for trout in autumn. The fish are constantly running up the river for the purpose of spawning, and every day offers a succession of new shoals, of which many will take the fly; I say _many_, because at this season some of the fish, particularly the females, are capricious, and refuse a bait, of which, under other circumstances they are greedy. I may say the same with respect to the exit of a river from a lake, to which successions of fishes resort, and though trout are found abundantly in such places, yet they are often still better places for grayling when these fish exist in the lake, the tendency of grayling being rather, as I said on another occasion, to descend than to ascend waters, whilst that of the trout is the contrary. The same principles apply to salmon and sea-trout fishing, which run up rivers from basins of the sea: the best situations for continuous angling are those parts of the river where there is a succession of fishes from the tide. POIET.—You spoke just now of peasants fishing with the fly in Austria: I thought this art was entirely English; and though I have travelled much, I do not recollect ever to have seen fly-fishing practised by native anglers abroad. HAL.—I assure you there are fishers with the artificial fly in different parts of Switzerland, Germany, and Illyria, though always with rude tackle, and usually upon rapid streams. Besides the Traun I can mention the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Drave, as rivers where I have seen fish caught with rude imitations of flies used by native anglers. In Italy, where trout and grayling are very rare, and only found amongst the highest mountain chains, I have never seen any fly-fishers, but near Ravenna I have sometimes seen anglers for frogs, who threw their bait exactly as we throw a fly, and caught great numbers of these animals: and the nature of their apparatus surprised me more than their method of using it. Instead of a hook and bait they employed a small dry frog, tied to a long piece of twine, the fore legs of which projected like two hooks, and this they threw at a distance, by means of a long rod. The frogs rose like fish and gorged the small dry frog, by the legs of which they were pulled out of the water. I was informed by one of these fishermen, that he sometimes took 200 frogs in this way in a morning, and that the frogs never swallowed any bait when still or apparently dead, but caught at whatever was moving or appeared alive on the surface of the water; so that this amphibia feeds like a nobler animal, the eagle, only on living prey. POIET.—You say trout are rare in Italy, yet on Ash-wednesday, a great day for the consumption of fish in Rome, I remember to have seen some large trout, which, I was told, were from the Velino, above the falls of Terni.