The carp family thrive, as ever they did, and in some years are caught in unusually large numbers, rejoicing the hearts of the professional fishermen who have languished for want of customers through a series of depressing fishing seasons. The head of the family is very rarely taken in the Thames proper. Some carp, however, are found in the Cherwell, and by accident, at very rare intervals, solitary specimens are caught in the Thames itself. But these are the accidental wanderers; exceptions proving the rule. Bream are more plentiful, but the most prolific of all are chub, roach, dace, and gudgeon. The popularity to which the Canadian canoe has risen on the Thames is not a little due to the adaptability of the light and elegant boat for chub-fishing. Regulating the drifting of the canoe with one hand, the operator, armed with a suitably short and supple fly-rod, drops down some fifteen yards distant from the overhanging willow-bushes, from under whose branches, close to the loamy or gravelly bank, a lightly-dropped fly of large dimensions will, in the calm of a July or August eventide, seduce the great bronze-coloured "chevin" to its fate, while, in the winter time, artful concoctions of cheese-paste, and other gross baits, directed down stream by a long Nottingham line and the familiar float tackle, will be equally efficacious in the formation of a bag. Roach and dace-fishing, the simplest of angling practices, as conducted from the comfortable floor and chair of a Thames punt, continues to be, as of yore, the most familiar form of the contemplative man's recreation for the average citizen. In the mysteries of fly-fishing, and the ingenious devices invented for betraying the fishes that follow spinning-baits of all descriptions, improvements real and so-called are continually announced, but no change seems to have been suggested for many years in the ancient methods adopted on the Royal River for the capture of barbel by ledgering, and roach and dace by ground-baiting, plumbing, and Thames punt-tackle. Angling in the Thames is a source of untold delight and innocent enjoyment for tens of thousands of persons every year, and long may the day be postponed when the modest privileges of the London anglers, whose opportunities are limited, and whose ambition in the matter of sport is easily satisfied, are reduced or interfered with.