COTTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 71 



to the fly, which was invariably copied from 

 nature. Markham tells the fisherman to have 

 natural flies in front of him, and to copy their 

 shape and colour. In fact, actual imitation of 

 the living insect was just as much a common- 

 place in the seventeenth century as it is now in 

 the twentieth, for it is recommended not only 

 in the great books, but even in trivial treatises. 

 Peacham's Compleat Gentleman (1634), for ex- 

 ample, which contains a few pages of unenter- 

 prising generalities on fishing, yet has this : 

 'For the making of these flyes the best way is 

 to take the naturall flye, and make one so like 

 it that you may have sport : for you must 

 observe what flyes haunt the water for seasons 

 of the yeare, and to make their like with Cot- 

 tons, Woole, Silke, or feathers to resemble the 

 like.' Cotton gives the dressings of sixty-five, 

 all original dressings, and Barker and Ven- 

 ables, though they describe general flies, base 

 their case on imitation. Chetham gives twenty, 

 nearly all modern names. The fly on the water 

 was always used when it could be ascertained. 

 You are recommended to look on the bushes, or 

 to examine a trout's stomach. Chetham tells 

 you to use a microscope to examine the flies 

 you find in it, which is wonderfully like to-day. 

 Particular flies were recognised as suitable for 

 particular districts. South country flies then 

 as now were larger and fatter than those of the 

 north, which were dressed slim, with little 

 hackle and the body not carried far down the 



