it were, with the primrose and the daisy; to wander upon the fresh turf below the shade of trees, whose bright blossoms are filled with the music of the bee; and on the surface of the waters to view the gaudy flies sparkling like animated gems in the sunbeams, whilst the bright and beautiful trout is watching them from below; to hear the twittering of the water-birds, who, alarmed at your approach, rapidly hide themselves beneath the flowers and leaves of the water-lily; and as the season advances, to find all these objects changed for others of the same kind, but better and brighter, till the swallow and the trout contend as it were for the gaudy May fly, and till in pursuing your amusement in the calm and balmy evening, you are serenaded by the songs of the cheerful thrush and melodious nightingale, performing the offices of paternal love, in thickets ornamented with the rose and woodbine. PHYS.—All these enjoyments might be obtained without the necessity of torturing and destroying an unfortunate animal, that the true lover of nature would wish to see happy in a scene of loveliness. HAL.—If all men were Pythagoreans and professed the Brahmin’s creed, it would undoubtedly be cruel to destroy any form of animated life; but if fish are to be eaten, I see no more harm in capturing them by skill and ingenuity with an artificial fly, than in pulling them out of the water by main force with the net; and in general, when taken by the common fishermen, fish are permitted to die slowly, and to suffer in the air, from the want of their natural element; whereas, every good angler, as soon as his fish is landed, either destroys his life immediately, if he is wanted for food, or returns him into the water. PHYS.—But do you think nothing of the torture of the hook, and the fear of capture, and the misery of struggling against the powerful rod? HAL.—I have already admitted the danger of analysing, too closely, the moral character of any of our field sports; yet I think it cannot be doubted that the nervous system of fish, and cold-blooded animals in general, is less sensitive than that of warm-blooded animals. The hook usually is fixed in the cartilaginous part of the mouth, where there are no nerves; and a proof that the sufferings of a hooked fish cannot be great is found in the circumstance, that though a trout has been hooked and played for some minutes, he will often, after his escape with the artificial fly in his mouth, take the natural fly, and feed as if nothing had happened; having apparently learnt only from the experiment, that the artificial fly is not proper food. And I have caught pikes with four or five hooks in their mouths, and tackle which they had broken only a few minutes before; and the hooks seemed to have had no other effect than that of serving as a sort of _sauce piquante_, urging them to seize another morsel of the same kind.