It is very often difficult to recognise the original in a product of cultivation. A prize pug is about as like a primitive dog as it is like a brontosaurus. Similarly a chalk-stream angler differs incredibly from the barbarian who with a paddle digs mud fish out of South African slime. Yet had man never imagined the eating of fishes, and set about procuring them in some such direct and practical fashion, the Itchen would not rent to-day at £2000 a mile. Or is it to-morrow?
During his journey from the shores of remote antiquity the angler has changed more than his costume and his tackle. He has developed a new point of view, which differentiates him from his old self far more completely than the split-cane and gossamer gut which he wags so dexterously back and forth over his chosen waters. He no longer fishes to eat; rather it may be said he eats to fish. Angling has become a sport, an art, a theory, a rule of life, and its original purpose is wholly obscured. Such carcases as its success-
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