is good in its degree, and tends to health and high spirits, and an anxiety to excel in his craft, as one can easily see who ventures by the side of the water about Kew and Richmond. “With hurried steps, The anxious angler paces on, nor looks aside, Lest some brother of the angle, ere he arrive, Possess his favourite swim.” [Illustration: THAMES ANGLERS.—FROM AN OLD PICTURE.] I come now to the perch, a well-known because common fish, about which a great deal has been written, and which is easily taken by the angler. There are a great number of species of this fish, from the common perch of our own canals and lochs to the “lates” of the Nile, or the beautiful golden-tailed mesoprion, which swims in the seas of Japan and India and flashes out brilliant rays of colour. The perch was assiduously cultivated in ancient Italy, in the days when pisciculture was an adjunct of gastronomy, and was thought to equal the mullet in flavour. In Britain, the fish, left to its natural growth and no care being taken to flavour it artificially, is surpassed for table purposes by the salmon and the trout; but perch being abundant afford plenty of good fishing. The perch usually congregate in small shoals, and delight in streams, or water with a clear bottom and with overhanging foliage to shelter them from the overpowering heats of summer. These fish do not attain any considerable weight, the one recorded as being taken in the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, which weighed nine pounds, being still the largest on record. Perch of three and four pounds are by no means rare, and those of one pound or so are quite common. The perch is a stupid kind of fish, and easily captured. Many of the foreign varieties of perch attain an immense weight. Some of the ancient writers tell us that the “lates” of the Nile attained a weight of three hundred pounds; and then there is the vacti of the Ganges, which is often caught five feet long. The perch, after it is three years old, spawns about May. It may be described as rather a hardy fish, as we know it will live a long time out of water, and can be kept alive among wet moss, so that it may be easily transferred from pond to pond. Its hardy nature accounts for its being found in so many northern lochs and rivers, as in the olden times of slow conveyances it must have taken a long time to send the fish to the great distances we know it must have been carried to. On the Continent, living perch are a feature of nearly all the fishmarkets. The fish, packed in moss and occasionally sprinkled with water, are carried from the country to the cities, and if not sold are taken home and replaced in the ponds. This particular fish, which is very prolific, might be “cultivated” to any extent. We do not see why a fish-pond should not be as much a portion of a country gentleman’s commissariat as his kitchen-garden or his cow-paddock. Perch are useful in more ways than are generally known. The Laplanders make glue