380 THE ANGLER. 



There are three sorts of flies that prey upon the angler, 

 the musquito, well described by Paddy as a bug with 

 wings, to enable him to make his escape after having 

 punched a hole in a fellow, and with a fiddle whereon he 

 plays a tune in derision of his baffled pursuer. Musquitoes 

 are most troublesome at nights. Black flies are peculiar 

 to the northern part of the continent of America, and the 

 farther north one goes in Canada the more numerous 

 they become. In Anticosti and the Labrador they bleed 

 one like leaches. The third variety, the sand-fly, is like 

 our midge ; their favourite pasture seems to be on the 

 New Brunswick rivers. Millions of these little pests, 

 hardly visible from their small size, torment the angler 

 in the evenings, and blister and burn every spot of skin 

 which the musquitoes and black flies have spared. What 

 all these flies live on when they cannot get fishermen 

 has always been a mystery to me. They are most 

 numerous on low, swampy ground, and prefer the soft 

 wood to the deciduous forests. Flies, bad as they are, 

 are not an unmitigated evil to the Canadian sportsman. 

 They devour pale-faced men from the cities, and are 

 particularly hard upon bons vivants, but the red-skin 

 and well-seasoned old voyageur are comparatively safe 

 from their attacks. Were it not for the flies the Cana- 

 dian rivers and lakes would be overrun with Yankee 

 tourists. Americans have the knack of combining busi- 

 ness with pleasure to a remarkable extent, which is no 

 doubt highly creditable to them ; but still it is in- 

 expressibly harrowing to the feelings of the angler to 

 see placarded up on the rocks and on the stems of the 

 trees in those places where Nature is most beautiful 



