INVOLUTION OF THE TROUT FLY. 



has no coloured reproductions of the natural 

 fly, and its scope is too limited. It is of little 

 use to the field naturalist, and his requirements 

 should be the object to be aimed at. Leonard 

 West's Natural Trout Fly and its Imitation 

 (1912) is in many ways excellent. It has good 

 plates. It is highly original. But it leaves out 

 too much; for instance, it does not mention 

 well-known flies such as the Grannom, Iron 

 Blue and Blue Winged Olive. Ronalds wrote 

 quite a marvellous book ; but it is getting on for 

 a hundred years old, and during that time 

 entomology has been revolutionised. Cannot 

 somebody give us the book for which we are 

 waiting ? 



But to return to the Grannom. Chetham 

 gives the first undoubted reference. He calls it 

 by its common name of Greentail in the list of 

 flies in his Appendix. Its body is from a brown 

 spaniel's ear, the tail end of sea-green wool, 

 and wings from a starling's quill feather. 

 Bowlker dressed it with a body of fur from the 

 black part of hare's face, ribbed with peacock 

 herl, two turns of grizzled cock's hackle at the 

 shoulder, and wings from a finely mottled 

 pheasant's wing feather. He found it no 

 advantage to imitate the green tail of the 

 female fly. It is a well-known fly, for it comes 

 up in vast numbers and is noticeable because of 

 the so-called green tail of the female, really a 

 bunch of eggs; consequently nearly all writers 

 from the seventeenth century onwards describe 



