EVOLUTION OF THE TROUT FLY. 185 



of his day, now largely obsolete).* At the same 

 time, for the unscientific, he gave exquisite 

 pictures, an example which Halford might 

 have followed. They are, in a well worn 

 phrase, works of art : it is difficult to imagine 

 better pictures of the mayfly, for instance. Nor 

 of the mayfly alone. All are good, and have 

 the important quality of making the living 

 insects easily recognisable. 



Ronalds was followed on two lines. Some 

 good books with plates of flies appeared, which 

 would either not have existed at all or would 

 have been done much less well had the 

 Entomology never been written. If anyone 

 doubts this, let him compare the rough and 

 inadequate plates of flies, natural and artifi- 

 cial, in Salmonia published only a few years 

 before Ronalds, with the beautiful and accu- 

 rate illustrations in the books which followed 

 him, such as Wheatley's Rod and Line, 

 Theakston's List, Jackson's Practical Fly- 

 Fisher and Wade's Halcyon. Identification 

 and illustration have passed out of the hands 

 of the amateur into those of the expert. There 

 were good naturalists and good engravers 

 before Ronalds, certainly; but he raised the 



*The fifth edition of Ronalds in 1856 and some later ones 

 were edited and revised by Piscator, whom Mr. H T. 

 Sheringham has conclusively identified as Barnard Smith, 

 author of the well known arithmetic. Smith modernised the 

 nomenclature. Pictet's work on the Neuroptera, in which the 

 Ephemeridae are included, began to appear in 1842, six years 

 after Ronalds' first edition, and was completed in 1845. It 

 would therefore have been available for Smith in 1856. 



