Having, as the author thinks satisfactorily, settled the preliminary questions, HALIEUS, succeeds in persuading PHYSICUS to join him in fishing excursions; just as _Piscator_ is represented by old Isaac, as having enlisted _Venator_ into the brotherhood of the angle. The dialogue now proceeds with great animation, during which the art and mystery of Piscatory tactics are unfolded with great skill; for the details of which the reader must be referred to the work itself. If, however, he be not already an angler, it may save him a world of pains to be informed, that to learn to fish by the book is little less absurd than "to make hay by the fair days in the almanack." The manner in which he treats the various subjects of natural history necessarily connected with the pursuit is both amusing and instructive; and the whole work is studded and gemmed, as it were, with the most poetical descriptions. In speaking of the swallow, _Poietes_ exclaims--"I delight in this living landscape! The swallow is one of my favourite birds, and a rival of the nightingale; for he cheers my sense of seeing as much as the other does my sense of hearing. He is the glad prophet of the year, the harbinger of the best season: he lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of nature: winter is unknown to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England in autumn, for the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa: he has always objects of pursuit, and his success is secure. Even the beings selected for his prey are poetical, beautiful, and transient. The ephemeræ are saved by his means from a slow and lingering death in the evening, and killed in a moment, when they have known nothing of life but pleasure. He is the constant destroyer of insects--the friend of man; and, with the stork and the ibis, may be regarded as a sacred bird. His instinct, which gives him his appointed seasons, and teaches him always when and where to move, may be regarded as flowing from a divine source; and he belongs to the oracles of Nature, which speak the awful and intelligible language of a present Deity."