POIET.—The explanation that you have just been giving us of the effects of playing fish, I confess alarms me, and makes me more afraid than I was before, that we are pursuing a very cruel amusement; for death by strangling, I conceive, must be very laborious, slow, and painful. PHYS.—I think as I did before I was an angler, as to the merciless character of field-sports; but I doubt if this part of the process of the fly-fisher ought so strongly to alarm your feelings. As far as analogies from warm-blooded animals can apply to the case, the death that follows obstructed respiration is quick, and preceded by insensibility. There are many instances of persons who have recovered from the apparent death produced by drowning, and had no recollection of any violent or intense agony; indeed, the alarm or passion of fear generally absorbs all the sensibility, and the physical suffering is lost in the mental agitation. I can answer from my own experience, that there is no pain which precedes the insensibility occasioned by breathing gasses unfitted for supporting life, but oftener a pleasurable feeling, as in the case of the respiration of nitrous oxide. And in the suffocation produced by the gradual abstraction of air in a close room where charcoal is burning, we have the record of the son of a celebrated chymist, that the sensation which precedes the deep sleep that ends in death is agreeable. There is far more pain in recovering from the insensibility produced by the abstraction of air than in undergoing it, as I can answer from my own feelings; and it is, I believe, quite true, what has been asserted, that the pain of being born, which is acquiring the power of respiration, is greater than that of dying, which is losing the power. ORN.—I have heard, that persons, who have been recovered from the insensibility produced by hanging, have never any recollection of the sufferings which preceded it; and as the blood is immediately determined to the head in this operation, probably apoplectic insensibility is almost instantaneous. There is on record a very remarkable trial respecting the death of an Italian, who was for many years in the habit of being hanged for the purpose of producing the temporary excitement of organs that had lost their power, and who ultimately fell a victim to this depraved and dangerous practice; but I will not dwell upon this case, which is well authenticated, and which is equally revolting to good feelings and delicacy.