fry which they are to furnish, are still in their infancy. Only two or three are yet erected; but the work is going on, and in a very few years there will be one or more on every principal salmon river in the three provinces. Mr. Wilmot, the son of the gentleman who began the business on lake Ontario several years since, has charge of them, and from what I saw of him during my recent visit, I am quite sure that he is the right man in the right place.

I have said this much on this subject of fish breeding, not because I object to what has been done at home, but with the earnest hope that what I have said or shall say may stimulate our legislature to do more. Our fish commissioners have done well with the scanty means placed at their disposal, and Seth Green, their zealous and intelligent agent, deserves the thanks and gratitude of the whole people. But you might as well try to scoop out lake Ontario with a landing net as to properly replenish our barren waters with the fish natural to them from the product of the all too limited establishment at Mumford.

We are mercifully told that Providence winked at what was done foolishly "in the time of man's ignorance." And while legislators were confessedly and excusably "ignorant" of the results of fish-breeding, no one was disposed to find fault with their excessive parsimony. But this

time of excusable ignorance is past; and now the man who does not comprehend the grand possibilities of fish-breeding, and who is unwilling to give his vote for its extension, is quite unfit to represent an intelligent constituency, and is himself a — well, a fish which is far less attractive to an artistic eye than to an epicurean palate. The Mumford hatching-house and its zealous manipulator have returned to the State and country a thousand fold for all they have expended. But "the little-one" should "become a thousand." From having the only source of supply so diminutive and so obscurely located that a stranger would waste as much time in discovering its whereabouts as Diogenes did in his vain search for an honest man, Seth Green should be made the superintendent of State hatching-houses at a dozen points in the Adirondacks, on lake Ontario, on the Hudson, and on several other waters, so that fish might be made a source of as great wealth to the State and of as great benefit to the people as the hog and poultry crop combined.

Anglers may be deemed a useless race by men who haven't juice enough in their composition to perspire with the thermometer at 90, nor muscle enough in their right arm to cast an eight ounce fly rod; but if their love of the sport and their desire, in season, to be able to effectively cast their lines in pleasant places, shall result in such an

enlightenment of the people and in such a concentration of public sentiment as to compel such wise and liberal legislation as will insure the replenishment of all our depleted streams with the fish indigenous to them, they will deserve the benedictions of all who would much rather feast and fatten upon the toothsome flakes of trout and salmon than grow lean and cadaverous in sipping the imaginary "nectar of the gods."

a

I find myself drawing toward my theme as a prudent general invests a beleaguered city, by very gradual approaches. But few fish are more prolific than the salmon, and those who write about them should be excused if in this they are like them. Besides, the salmon is the king of fish, and all kings have many subjects. And still besides, salmon pool can only be fished successfully when approached with caution. I am acting upon this principle in penning these rambling chapters. I do not intend to hazard the satisfaction I find in composing them, or the diversion which awaits those who shall have the good taste to read them, by any premature denouement. Half the pleasure of the "good times" of life is lost by the rush and hurry with which they are begun and ended. Just now, for the first time in half a century, I am in no hurry. It is a new sensation and I rather like it.

CHAPTER VI.

HOBBIES AND SOME OF THEIR RIDERS.

The variety and contrary choices that men make in the world argue that the same thing is not good to every man alike. This variety of pursuits shows that every one does not place his happiness in the same thing.- [Locke.

T is not true that " every man has his hobby." The great mass of men have no special source of pleasurable diversion. They are content to walk the weary treadmill of life in stoical monotony, if they can but have the barren assurance that "their oil and their wine increaseth." But with the man who has his "hobby" it is not so. Equally with others, he has respect unto his larder and his bank account, and is as willing as the most thoroughly devoted man of business to have "both ends meet" seasonably and symmetrically. He has no less zeal or energy, and is quite as industrious and thrifty as his neighbor; but through the rift in the cloud of his daily struggle, he catches frequent glimpses of his beloved "hobby," and his heart throbs and his step becomes

elastic as the hour approaches when he can "take a ride." It may be that the "hobby" is trotted out daily in the form of a rose-bud, a sheet of music, the framework of some impracticable piece of mechanism, an unsolvable problem in mathematics, or a newly-devised "fly," lovingly fondled in anticipation of its grand achievements upon some remote sunny holiday, when the dear "hobby" shall prance by the side of a murmuring meadow brook or a babbling mountain rivulet. However, wherever or whenever ridden, (whether with every sunset or with the waning moon, or only once a year when trout and salmon are in season,) it is well to have a harmless "hobby" standing in some cozy nook of the imagination, to be led out at will, and to be straddled and ridden when the muscles ache, when the brain is weary and when the heart is sad. The man without a "hobby" may be a good citizen and an honest fellow, but he can have but few golden threads running through the web or woof of his monotonous existence.

Of all the "hobbies" known to advanced civilization, none is more harmless, none more exbilarating, none more healthful and none which ambles more gently than that of the angler. The months of grooming of anticipation and of preparation -are only less delightful than the pleasurable