Abstract
IN recent years the contemplative man seems to have changed his nature, to judge from some of the books which he gives to the world. Time was when he was content just to go fishing, with the simple object of catching fish. But now his demeanour is more that of a man who is setting out on a serious piece of scientific work, and, though he has not quite lost what Francis Francis used to call “a kind of prejudice for a brace of fish in the creel,” he is mighty particular as to how that brace of fish got there. Should he, so to say, have been overtaken in inadvertency and have decoyed one of them in a manner not permitted to the elect, his conscience will know many pangs, and likely his tongue will begin the story with apology and end with explanation. There is no longer pride in a fish just as a fish. The modern achievement is a fish caught on a female olive. The same fish caught on an Alexandra would be like a shot fox; for the angler has become a much improved and superior person, and (may we confess it?) at times a little difficult to live with.
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Art and Craft in Fishing 1 . Nature 96, 7–9 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/096007b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/096007b0