FLIES AND KNOTS. 271 
two makers agreeing, and some indnlging in remarkable 
eccentricities. But as Limerick hooks are generally 
used for fly-making, the numbers 2, 1, 1|^, and Vq will 
include all that is requisite. 'No. IJ is my favorite for 
ordinary j^urposes, but a few Vy may be desirable in 
heavy water, with an occasional monster for foaming 
rapids. 
The charges for dressing trout flies in this country are 
exorbitant, whereas in England they can be purchased 
o^ the best makers at from seventy-five cents to a dollar 
and a half per dozen ; we are charged from a dollar and a 
half to three dollars, and generally furnished an inferior 
article. There is an abominable article of wholesale 
traffic sold for fifty cents a dozen, that is beneath any 
sportsman's notice. I have imported a great many, but 
it is a troublesome operation, and the best way is to bear 
the imposition meekly. 
The English and Irish salmon flies are, on the con- 
trary, expensive ; a great deal of the neck and top-knot 
of the golden pheasant and of the wings of the blue-jay 
is employed, birds which cost from ten to twenty-five 
dollars a piece, and wliich only furnish twenty to thirty 
pairs of each kind of feathers. The use, therefore, of 
several long crest and neck feathers at fifty cents a pair 
in the wing, and five or six from the top-knot for the 
tail, besides other expensive materials and the employ- 
ment of the best workmanship, will make a fly dear at 
the original cost. Blacker, the great English rod and 
fly maker, has been paid two guineas apiece for his 
finest. The reader may console himself by remembering 
that salmon were taken with the fly before the golden 
