284 SALMON AND TROUT. 



luck to use it occasionally when the natural insect was strong 

 on the water, and it was taken in preference , to anything else. 

 I may add that the heaviest take of large trout which ever came 

 to my knowledge though, alas ! I was not the captor was 

 made with this fly on the upper waters of Foston Beck, now in 

 the hands of Colonel St. Quentin. 



I might fairly rest my case on these two instances,. in which 

 the peculiarities of the natural insect during one brief phase of 

 its existence are reproduced with such effect in the artificial fly. 

 But I cannot pass by the ' local value ' to borrow an artist's 

 phrase of certain flies tied in imitation of insects unknown 

 beyond a limited district. Every Devonshire man knows the 

 virtues of the ' blue upright ' a dusky, smooth-bodied fly, 

 varying from pale slate colour to a dead black. It holds, in 

 fact, on Devonian streams much the same place as the mur- 

 derous * blue dun ' with its downy body m a great majority of 

 our English counties. Now on my first introduction to a 

 Devonshire stream I noticed great numbers of a slender, active 

 insect which had no representative in my fly book, and which I 

 felt sure I had never seen before. But a local artist soon sup- 

 plied me with the imitation I wanted, and since that time I 

 have killed more trout in Devon with the ' blue upright ' than 

 with any other fly, and have seen the natural insect on every 

 stream I have fished in that land of brooks. Surely this is 

 more than a mere coincidence. 



All this is so obvious, that my readers may ask how anyone 

 could ever propose to question it ? Yet in defence of the 

 Scottish ' nondescriptarians ' it should be said that they can tell 

 of experiences much at variance with those on which I have 

 built my inference. I have fished in some forty Scotch lochs 

 or tarns, rarely without fair success, sometimes with brilliant 

 results ; yet where the Salmo fario alone is in question, I have 

 but half a dozen flies on my list for active service. Of these 

 half-dozen two only, and those by no means the best, resemble 

 any natural fly with which I am acquainted. I do not pretend 

 to explain this fact, nor what mysterious harmony between a 



