present day. Returning to olden times, our fathers and forefathers were not ashamed to run horses, greyhounds, etc., in their own names; now men do so more and more under assumed ones. This is unfortunate, and opens the door for many abuses; and the sooner it is put an end to the better.

I do not believe in the early hours at which our ancestors used to take to the field. Game is not moving very early; therefore, in partridge shooting, dogs have not such a chance of finding game as they have an hour or two later. Nine o'clock is quite early enough for the partridge or grouse shooter; about four in the afternoon is the most deadly time, because scent then begins to ascend, and the dogs catch it much quicker, and birds are then on the feed. The stubble, at this time, is the place to find partridges.

It is a great mistake to walk too fast, shooting, because much game is missed in this way; even very fast dogs require sufficient time to make their ground good; in thick turnips you can hardly walk too slowly.

But I must hold, these notes are growing too long under my "grey goose quill." (I am old-fashioned enough to prefer a quill pen to a steel one.) Old fellow-sportsmen, and young ones, adieu. May you have a good season, and good health and spirits to enjoy it!

DOWN THE BECK

AN ANGLING REVERIE

Like the dormouse, the approach of spring draws forth also the angler. So early as February trout-fishing begins in the West of England, and good sport may be had during March and April. May, however, is the month of months for the trout fisher, certainly in the Midland Counties, and wherever the May fly is found, and probably in the West as well. With the first sunny gleams of February that herald the full burst of spring, Halieus and Poietes may be seen rod in hand down their streams, rejoicing that the many cold days, during which they have been longingly fingering flies and tackle at home, are at length ended. So many eulogies have been heaped upon fishing, which culminate in the enthusiasm of gentle Isaak, the father of the craft, that the world must indeed be tolerant if it can read any more.

But between his zeal on the one hand, and the venerable dictum of Dr Johnson on the other, lies a truer appreciation of the art of angling with a fly as being the busy man's most suitable recreation, in the strictest sense of the word, in these feverish days of intellectual and social bustle. Besides the love of sport for its own sake, fly-fishing provides numerous secondary delights and occupations for thoughtful, observant natures. Whatever be a man's hobby, he can ride it as hard as he chooses down the banks of a trout stream. The rigour of the game is all very well for whist; but fishing, with no other object than killing fish, is altogether mean and ignoble. In this pursuit the fisherman may be conchologist, ornithologist, or botanist as well—nay, he may be all at once, and probably is so if he be a devoted student of nature. The poet can throw off a sonnet while he flings his fly; the clergyman will be taught by angling, as truly as by Shakespeare, how to find sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks. Did not St Anthony convert heretics by preaching to the fishes? Like Narcissus of old, the lover may see his other self mirrored in the quiet waters. Whatever be his profession, while the angler meditatively saunters on with a blade of grass between his lips, his thoughts will sooner or later be certain to find their own peculiar bent. Even the philosopher ought to be attracted from his study to the brook. Plutarch tells how the Pythagoreans abstained from eating fish, deeming them, on account of their dumbness, creatures most kindred to the philosophic mind. Theology itself has not scrupled to embalm the highest mysteries under the symbol of a fish; and grave bishops at present do not disdain exploits with the salmon-rod that are duly chronicled in the columns of the Field. Thus, the true angler may