THE COMMON BROWN TROUT. 223 



Blacker, Ronald, and a host of others the opposing forces. Before doing 

 so, however, let me advert to the dress of the angler, a point I had 

 almost omitted. Perhaps my directions cannot be better expressed in 

 part than by the following stanza from the "Secrets of Angling," by 

 "J. D., Esq.": 



And let your garments russet be or gray, 



Of colour clarke, and hardest to descry, 

 That with the raine or weather will away, 



And least offend the fearful fishes eye : 

 For neither scarlet, nor rich cloth of ray, 



Nor colours dipt of fresh Assyrian dye, 

 Nor tender silkes of purple, paule of gold. 



Will serve so well to keep off wet or cold. 



It may be said in addition that the hat mnst not be white or light 

 colour, but rather " russet or grey." Even a white " puggaree " is inad- 

 missible. 



The system of fly fishing with which Mr. Pennell astounded the conser- 

 vative fly fishers of the day does away with the estimated one thousand 

 patterns of artificial flies, and substitutes six arbitrary " typical " non- 

 descripts in their place viz., three for trout, grayling, &c., and three for 

 salmon and grilse. His arguments are urged with such logical force 

 that, if we accept his premises without question, we are bound to admit 

 that the system is the only one by which the angler need be guided. 

 Experiments with the flies he has constructed also seem to favour his 

 theory. Before commenting further, however, a brief resume of the 

 arguments he uses is necessary. He commences by intimating that trout 

 fly fishers now-a-days may be roughly divided into two parties the 

 " colourists," who think colour everything and despise considerations 

 of "form," and the "formalists," who hold with Eonald that the 

 natural fly actually on the water at a given time should be closely 

 imitated, down to the minutest particulars of form and tinting. The latter 

 class have probably never questioned what seemed to them a rational 

 theory, and include the great majority ; the former are but a section, 

 though an increasing one, of the fly fishing community. Both these 

 styles are held by our author to be unsound in fact, the arguments of 

 the two schools are, according to him, mutually destructive. 



He estimates the position of the " formalists " as follows: "Trout 

 take artificial flies only because they in some sort resemble the natural 

 flies which they are in the habit of seeing ; if this be not so, and if 

 colour is the only point of importance, why does not the ' colourist ' fish 

 with a bunch of feathers tied on the hook promiscuously ? Why adhere 

 to the form of the natural fly at all ? Evidently, because it is found, 

 as a matter of fact, that such a bunch of feathers will not kill in other 

 words, because the fish do not take the artificial for the natural insect. 

 If this be so, it follows that the more minutely the artificial imitates the 



