PALMER-HACKLES. 1 03 



sizes and colours may be varied to infinity. If 

 our experience did not inform us that they are 

 very effective in taking fish, we should be natu- 

 rally led to expect it ; for as every tree and every 

 bush which overhangs the water teems with one 

 or more varieties of larvae, which must be con- 

 stantly liable to fall into it, and as from their 

 natural plumpness of figure they must form a 

 delicious morsel, we need not wonder that the fish 

 are always ready to receive them, unless something 

 more tempting (as when particular favourite flies 

 are on the water) is at hand to attract their at- 

 tention. As these larvae are continually appearing 

 in endless succession, so palmers are used to ad- 

 vantage from March until the latest period of fly- 

 fishing, or at least until October. In May, June, 

 July, and August they are, however, in the 

 greatest request. When the innumerable varia- 

 tions in the size, form, and colour of the larvae of 

 insects are considered, it is evident that the di- 

 rections in our angling-books to confine the number 

 of palmers to three, four, or five, are limited in 

 the extreme ; but it is still more erroneous to con- 

 fine their size to a No. 6 hook. On the contrary, 

 there is such an endless number of them, each 

 different from the other, that the dresser may vary 

 them in any way he pleases with effect, tying them 

 on hooks from No. 4 to No. 9 ; but keeping these 

 general principles in view, that when the water is 



