vi PREFACE 



minutes make clear what you may never have 

 been able to understand from a book, the 

 latter, if supplied by good diagrams, will be 

 quite sufficiently helpful in enabling you to 

 acquire familiarity with and ultimately pro- 

 ficiency in the handling of silks, furs, and 

 feathers. 



The difficulty, however, is to be able to 

 record in writing the various manipulations 

 in concise and unequivocal terms a difficulty 

 which, I must confess, has been very forcibly 

 borne in upon me while writing these pages, 

 and which, had I realized it in the first in- 

 stance, would undoubtedly have made me 

 think twice before undertaking to write a 

 book on fly-dressing at all, particularly in 

 view of other and routine work on hand 

 which left me only a few moments at odd 

 times to devote to what under different 

 circumstances would have been a form of 

 amusement. 



Though I have been at considerable pains to 

 make my meaning clear and to avoid ambiguity 

 throughout, I am by no means happy in 

 my mind that I have succeeded in doing so. 

 But I venture to hope that any deficiencies 



