EVOLUTION OF THE TROUT FLY. 155 



thread make not a bad fly. As usual Cotton 

 improves it a little and Chetham much. He 

 strikes the two notes of modernity, yellow 

 dubbing spun on yellow silk and starling wings : 

 Chetham 's pattern in fact is like Ronalds' first 

 imitation, minus the hackle. The hackle is 

 perhaps an improvement, but dubbing well 

 picked out is nearly as good. Finally Ronalds 

 gives it a shape which no one wants to improve. 

 Jackson followed Ronalds with little variation, 

 and Francis followed Jackson, and so on till 

 now. For the floating fly the Yellow Dun is 

 merged in the Olive, with a quill body : and 

 there are innumerable other dressings, often 

 varying but slightly. 



MARCH BROWN. 



Not in the Treatise nor Cotton : I suppose it 

 does not appear on the Derbyshire streams 

 which Cotton fished, for Aldam only gives it 

 in his Appendix. It is not included in the 

 manuscript he edited. Not mentioned indeed 

 till Chetham, who called it the Moorish Brown 

 and tied it with wool got from between a black 

 sheep's ears spun on red silk, and wings of a 

 partridge's quill feather. Bowlker calls it the 

 Brown Fly or Dun Drake and tells a lot about 

 it : it used to be tied, he says, of a dun drake's 

 feather and hare's fur, which he thinks not the 

 colour of the fly. He made it of hare's fur 

 ribbed with yellow silk, partridge hackle, and 

 wing from either partridge or pheasant, 



