THE DRY FLY. 117 



water and liked flies which kept there and did 

 not sink. And they advise you what materials 

 you should use for flies, and how you should 

 cast if you wish to fish near the surface. Now, 

 in giving this advice they use words which in 

 the light of our after knowledge make them 

 appear to describe the dry fly. They are really 

 doing nothing of the kind. They are contrasting 

 not a floating with a wet fly, but one which 

 swims at or near the surface with one which 

 sinks deep below it. Still less are they advo- 

 cating what is the essence of the dry fly, that 

 it should float over the fish like the natural 

 insect. Still perhaps the passages are interest- 

 ing enough to be worth quoting. 



The first goes right back to the beginning of 

 things. Leonard Mascall in 1590 gives a list 

 of twelve trout flies. They are taken from the 

 Treatise, without acknowledgment it is needless 

 to say. But there are two important additions. 

 In describing the Ruddy Fly, which is clearly 

 our Red Spinner, he says, what the Treatise 

 does not, that it is 'a good Fly to angle with 

 aloft on the water.' And Izaak Walton follows 

 Mascall. And Mascall again at the end of the 

 list adds something not in the Treatise, for he 

 says, speaking of all the flies that he has 

 described, 'thus are they made upon the hooke, 

 lapt about with corke, like each fly afore 

 mentioned/ Apparently, therefore, he intended 

 each fly's body to have a cork foundation, 

 which would tend to make it float, and one fly 



