HALFORD AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 149 



sport. Even as a boy-angler, however, he showed his 

 inherent tendency to inquire, and understand, and 

 improve ; he worked out the mysteries of the Notting- 

 ham style on the Thames, and the betterment of sea 

 fishing tackle with the same ingenuity, perseverance, 

 and success as in after years attended his studies of 

 chalk stream insects, their artificial imitations, and the 

 perfecting of the tackle demanded by the highest class 

 of fly-fishing. Let it not, however, be forgotten that 

 he was never out of sympathy with any class of angler 

 or angling. If he appeared indifferent to forms of 

 angling loved by others, it was simply that he placed 

 his own first. In angling, it was trout and grayling 

 fishing that mattered most. He adopted it as his 

 choice, and clung to it. 



People were just getting accustomed to the word 

 " dry-fly " when Halford began his career as a scien- 

 tific exponent of the art to which he devoted so many 

 years of work and study. This was in the late sixties, 

 and he took trout fever on the pellucid Wandle, at 

 that time a beautiful stream with good store of singu- 

 larly handsome trout, and a regular company of gentle- 

 men fly-fishers. The dry-fly men were, however, few, 

 for the eyed-hook was not in fashion, and the custom, 

 not only on the Wandle, but on other chalk streams, 

 was to use the finest gut attachments to flies that were 

 dressed for floating. 



It was so like Halford to listen with all his ears to 

 the advice of the few who urged the advantage of the 

 dry fly. Anything in the shape of an improvement 

 upon something that existed was like red rag to a bull 

 to him, and he went for the new idea with all his heart. 

 He also went for the line which was the standard of 

 perfection to our forefathers, and I must confess that 

 the love of the familiar silk and hair line, with which 



