SOUTH COUNTRY ANGLING 13 



to what fly it is supposed to be an imitation 

 of. 



These two groups, it will be seen, do not include 

 certain insects, such as the cow-dung fly, which 

 are not really water flies at all, but occasionally 

 get blown on to the stream against their inclina- 

 tion and habit. Reference indeed has only been 

 made to the common water flies of the southern 

 counties with their imitations. Some of them, 

 especially perhaps the cow-dung fly, are by no 

 means unimportant to the angler, and their imita- 

 tions may not fairly be classed among the fancy 

 patterns, such as the governor — which really can- 

 not be taken by any trout, as some will have it, 

 for a bee ! — or the Wickham or peacock. At the 

 same time their visits to the water are of a merely 

 accidental and occasional character, and they 

 scarcely claim notice in a work of this character. 



There are three or four lures, besides those 

 already mentioned, which cannot be quite over- 

 looked in a work on Southern trout streams. The 

 palmers — which I am inclined to think must be 

 regarded as uncommon visitors to cur streams 

 — are imitations not of flies at all in an imago 

 or sub-imago state, but of various caterpillars. 

 The fly books of few Devon or Somerset anglers 

 will be without them as the season advances ; 

 while a large red palmer used in the large fly 

 method of angling on chalk or semi-chalk streams 

 further east, is sometimes irresistible when offered 

 to heavy trout. There is the coch-a-bonddu, which 

 is supposed to be the imitation of a small beetle, 

 chiefly confined to the three most western counties 

 referred to in this book ; the black gnat, a summer 

 insect common to the whole of the South, and a 



