HOW TO TIE FLIES. 



is a creed which does discredit alike to fisherman 

 and fish. 



There is now a third theory to be examined. 

 That which, assuming an analogy more or less 

 complete between the purpose of the fly-fisher 

 and that of the advertiser, lays down the rule 

 that, whereas the latter sometimes finds it 

 advantageous to attract attention by a misspelt 

 word or some striking incongruity, the former 

 may hope for good results from the use of an 

 artificial fly resembling the natural in most 

 respects, but with such a difference as may be 

 expected to excite curiosity but not engender 

 fright. This, I think, is a fair statement of the 

 views advanced as plausible by " Mona " in the 

 F. G. some months ago, and vigorously contro- 

 verted by " Pheasant Tail." 



There may be much good sense in the idea, as 

 I shall hereafter attempt to show, if applied only 

 at times when fish are not feeding ; but, if I reason 

 aright, it depends on an obvious fallacy when its 

 application is extended. A feeding fish cannot 

 be considered to be in an ordinary casual state of 

 consciousness. It is, we should expect, by virtue 

 of being a feeding fish, in a state open to receive 

 one certain impression, namely, the image of the 

 fly on which it is feeding, and relatively im- 

 pervious to all other impressions of no greater 

 inherent magnitude ; in fact, in a state compar- 

 able rather to that of a person scanning a hoarding 

 for a well-known advertisement he wishes to 

 see, the hoarding containing only advertisements 

 of about the same size and general charac- 

 teristics, than to that of an unpreoccupied 

 bystander. And just as any advertisement would 

 attract the attention of the said man in a degree 

 proportionate to its resemblance to the one of 

 which he is in search, so the nearer one's artificial 

 resembles the fly which is being taken at the time, 



