224 THE PRACTICAL FISHERMAN. 



natural fly the better it will kill, and also, by a legitimate deduction, 

 that the imitation of the fly on the water at any given time is that which 

 the fish will take best." 



To this the " colourists" answer: "Your theory supposes that trout 

 can detect the nicest shades of distinction between the species of flies 

 which in a summer afternoon may be numbered actually by hundreds, 

 thus crediting them with an amount of entomological knowledge which 

 even a professed naturalist, to say nothing of the angler himself, very 

 rarely possesses, whilst at the same time you draw your flies up and 

 across stream in a way in which no natural insect is ever seen, not 

 only adding to the impossibility of discriminating between different 

 species, but often rendering it difficult for the fish even to identify the 

 flies as flies. The only thing a fish can distinguish under these circum- 

 stances, besides the size of a fly, is its colour. We therefore regard form 

 as a matter of comparative indifference and colour as all important." 



Respecting these statements, which so reasonably seem to submit the 

 case of both schools, Mr. Pennell points out that though they are logically 

 complete answers to each other, nevertheless they err because they are 

 based on insufficient distinction between that which is true and that 

 which is false. It is clear, as the "formalist" says, that colour is not 

 everything in a fly, because, if it were, a bunch of feathers tied on simply 

 would take fish, whereas such is indubitably not the case. On the other 

 hand, the "colourist" argument that, from the way the artificial fly 

 is presented to the fish, it is impossible they can distinguish minutiae of 

 the form and imitation, equally commends itself to common sense and 

 experience. " This," says Pennell, ' ' is the point in fact in which the ento- 

 mological theory entirely breaks down." The formalist omits to note the 

 fact that the imitation fly is presented under entirely different circum- 

 stances from the natural fly, viz., underwater instead of on the surface 

 wet instead of dry, and in brisk motion instead of passively floating. 

 Thus the simulation of life instead of death, and because the ordinary 

 material of which flies are made is too " fluffy " to retain its strength of 

 colour when wetted, fly bodies are constantly made of hard silk instead 

 of dubbings, and an unnatural quantity of hackles is added to it. 



"The colourists," Mr. Pennell says, "take advantage of this undeni- 

 able position to assail the whole system of form as a blunder, and, 

 in doing so, themselves make a blunder still greater ; they not only draw 

 from correct premises an erroneous conclusion, but they draw a conclusion 

 the very opposite of the logical one. For if it be admitted (a) that 

 trout do take the artificial for the natural fly, and (6) that from the 

 way in which the fly must be presented to them it is difficult to be recog- 

 nised, the logical deduction is not that the form is of no consequence, 



