weed is to see a comical embodiment of disgust, astonishment and despair. His bewailment and self-upbraidings find expression in the unspoken thought: "With a little more care how different 'it might have been.'" All salmon fishers have passed through this experience and understand it. No others can, however graphically described. Did not the poet have this picture in his mind when he wrote:

Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only: "It might have been."
God pity them both and pity us all

Who vainly the dreams of our youth recall;
For of all the sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been."

There is but one sound in nature, animate or inanimate, which at all resembles the whir of a reel when in full play the rattling trill of a kingfisher when on the wing. It is a singular coincidence that the music of the best angler known to ornithology finds its most perfect counterpart in that which man finds indispensable to his successful pursuit of a pastime that constitutes its life-long vocation. This bird most abounds on swift-running waters. They are in great numbers on the Cascapedia, and more than once my reel and this feathered angler have joined in a duet, to my great amusement and delight. They were in as perfect accord as if brought into concert pitch by the hand of the same master.

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.-[Sir Izaak Walton.

ALMON fishing is confessedly the highest department in the school of angling. With very rare exceptions, the tact and skill necessary for its successful practice is only acquired by long experience in the minor branches of the art, first, in early youth, with bait, for chub, perch and sunfish; next, in the transition state, with troll, for bass, pickerel and muscalonge; and lastly, when the mind takes in the exciting realities and poetic possibilities of the art, with fly, in streamlet, river and lake. It is not until after all is attained that is attainable in trout waters that salmon are sighed for, and only very few who thus sigh are ever able to have their longings gratified. But those whose experience has been limited to bait or troll seldom aspire to anything beyond the pleasant amusement

which these primitive modes of angling afford them. Having never cast a fly they have no conception of the superiority of that mode of angling over all others, and so soon weary of a pastime which, from its sameness and tameness, fails to attract when something more than mere muscular exercise or physical excitement is required to hold its votaries. A gray-haired bait-fisher is very rare, while the passion for fly-casting, whether for trout or salmon, grows by what it feeds upon, and continues a source of the highest pleasure even after the grasshopper becomes a burden. But this is not. strange; for there is as much difference between these extremes of the art as there is between the harsh music of a hurdy-gurdy and the divine harmony of the violin.

There is, however, such a similarity between trout and salmon fishing that pleasure can be found in either by the expert in both. And as trout usually abound in salmon waters, they are often fished for as a rest from the heavy work involved in the capture of salmon.

Judge FULLERTON had been familiar with trout streams from his youth up. There are few brooks or rivers where trout "most do congregate," from Maine to New Brunswick, in which he has not "slain his thousands." I was not surprised, therefore, to find him very early hankering after a day's

hunt for trout. Nor was I any more surprised to find him returning to camp long before half the day was over, with thirty-five pounds of splendid fish, ranging from half a pound to three pounds in weight. Subsequently he met with even greater success once taking forty-five pounds during a short afternoon. As an experiment, I myself caught sixteen large trout in thirty minutes, with an eightounce rod, without a landing net. It was unsportsmanlike sport. My only excuse was to see what could be done in these waters; and as the fish could all be put to good use, there was no waste and consequently no upbraidings of conscience.

The trout in the Cascapedia, and, indeed, in all these salmon rivers, are mostly sea trout, running up the rivers every season, like salmon, to spawn. When they leave the salt water, their spots have scarcely the slightest tinge of crimson. Later, they assume a somewhat brighter hue; but they never attain the beautiful brilliancy of the brook-trout in our home streams. Nor, as a rule, do they rise as sprightly to the fly. Indeed, like salmon, they usually strike without projecting themselves so much as their head's length above the surface. But they are strong, and as they run much larger than the average brook-trout in any of our home waters (save, perhaps, the Rangely lakes), they afford splendid play, and often draw the angler away

from the more kingly but far more laborious sport which salmon afford.

There are in these waters brook as well as seatrout, but they are found mostly in or near the mouths of the small streams emptying into the main river. When we coveted a meal of them, ranging from two to four ounces, we knew just where to find them, and, what is equally important, just how to crisp them. There may be a more delicious dish than small brook-trout properly cooked, just as there may be a more delicious fruit than the strawberry, but the fact has not yet passed into the annals of modern discovery.

It may not be out of place nor uninteresting to some of my readers to say, while I think of it, that I took some pains to gather the opinions of our Indian guides on the mooted question, "Do fish hear?" To my surprise I found that there was but one opinion -- the negative of the question. And a great many facts were given in support of this opinion, much to my satisfaction, as I have for a long time been fully satisfied that all fish are "deaf as adders."

This question was amusingly discussed the other day. Having arranged to change camp, we requested one of the baggage canoe-guides, who moved off a day in advance of us, to mark two or three spots which he knew to be good casting