COTTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 73 



mouthed fish such as grilse or grayling. There 

 is nothing new in the world, for double hooked 

 flies are usually supposed to have come in at 

 the end of the nineteenth century. Venables 

 expressly says that he means hooks with points 

 at 90 and not opposite each other, such as had 

 recently come in for trolling. This double hook 

 is very old, for it is figured in Mascall. 



The two, or rather three, schools of practice 

 which have always divided fly dressers were 

 already distinguished. Granted that you 

 should copy nature, you can copy her in vary- 

 ing degrees. You may have special artificials, 

 such as the Grannom, the Alder, the Iron Blue, 

 the Mayfly and many others, which imitate one 

 species only and nothing else. Or you may 

 have general flies, imitating a group of species, 

 such as the Ginger Quill, which imitates a 

 Light Olive or a Pale Watery; or such as the 

 Hares Ear Sedge, which is a fair copy of 

 several sorts of sedges; or the Partridge and 

 Orange, which imitates both the February Red 

 and the nymph of the Blue Winged Olive. 

 Lastly, there are fancy flies, which imitate not 

 a species nor a genus nor a group, but fly life 

 generally; such as the Wickham, the Red Tag, 

 or Stewart's three Spiders. It is rather 

 remarkable that specific imitation, the most 

 highly developed, comes first in history. All 

 flies in the Treatise seem to be exact copies, and 

 it is not till Cotton's time that general and 

 fancy flies appear. Cotton himself, however, 



