pon, and if you lay it aside for any length of time when in
that state, you will find, if you attempt to make use of it, that it is
utterly worthless. The shaved Gut is good, but expensive. The best I
ever purchased was at Rowell's, at Carlisle.

MAY, "charming, charming May," is generally a delightful Angling month,
for if the water is in order, good diversion may be had almost every
day. A great variety of flies now make their appearance at which the
Trout rise very greedily, full of life, vigour and activity, they roam
everywhere after their prey, and scarcely a fly settles upon the water
but falls a victim to the quick eyed and hungry fish. Trolling, and
worm fishing become now very good, and it is advisable to fish with
either one or the other in the early part of the day. When the flies
have not made their appearance, and before fish rise of themselves, it
is of little use trying the fly, it is only labour lost, "_to call
spirits from the vasty deep, who will not come when you do call for
them_." Indeed, on the best of fishing days, there are some half hours
when a man who understands what he is about, will lay down his rod,
because he knows the fish have done feeding for a time, and that
flogging the water to no purpose may be exercise, but not sport. In
this leisure half hour then, let the angler smoke, eat, examine his
Tackle, or lay out and admire his fish, this last way of killing time,
brings to my recollection the lines of Wordsworth,--

"He holds a small blue stone,
On whose capacious surface is outspread,
Large store of gleaming crimson spotted trouts,
Ranged side by side in regular ascent,
One after one still lessening by degrees,
Up to the Dwarf that tops the pinnacle,
The silent creatures made a splendid sight together
thus exposed;
Dead, but not sullied or deformed by death,
That seemed to pity what he could not spare."

WORDSWORTH.

JUNE, loveliest of the Summer months, introduces to the notice of
anglers a large and daily increasing number of the insect tribe;
"variety may be charming," but the most expert and knowing of anglers
will now occasionally be somewhat puzzled in making a selection of
flies adapted to suit the capricious whims, or fastidious appetite of
the Trout, now in their prime, fat, strong, and somewhat satiated by a
succession of dainty morsels. Now is the time to rise with, or rather
indeed before the lark, and try your luck wi