degrees of greater and less perfection. Fourthly, then, I find the man who fishes for the single purpose of successfully deceiving the trout into the belief that he is going to eat a living fly—in other words, he fishes for rises. When he addresses himself to his work he is moved by no wish to see his prey—he seeks no prey—gasping upon the grass. He sits down before none but the oldest and most circumspect of fishes, those fishes which are the despair of other, of lesser anglers. He will pass a summer casting over one of these, and he will count his time well spent can he but persuade it to open its mouth to him once. He is calm in the presence of the loaded creels of his fellows, for he knows that for him are joys of a rarer and more essential quality than any that visit their degraded bosoms.
I am now getting on to very high ground. My fifth angler takes his pleasure through a pair of field-glasses. It is his to watch the trout and their ways. He sits by the stream, purged of every thought save the acquirement of knowledge. It is to him that we owe the priceless information that a trout will rise at other objects than living insects; small twigs, for example, scraps of straw—yes, and the petals of flowers.
Is it possible, you ask, that angling can be carried yet higher? The number seven was men-
