152 ROD AND RIVER 



HALEORD. 



Wings : Tomtit's tail. 

 Body : A strip of quill from the outside small 



feather of a coot's wing. 

 Hackle and tails : Dark-blue Andaltisian. 



Hook oo. 



Halford gives two or three dressings of this 

 fly, the one I have selected being, in my 

 opinion, as good as any, and simple. 



THE JENNY SPINNER (EPHEMERA). 



This is the spinner of the iron blue. Of all 

 the transformations which this family undergo, 

 surely none is so complete as is the case with 

 this fly. The sombre crape-like garb is cast 

 aside, and thereout steps the most exquisite little 

 fairy bride which can be imagined, clad in a robe 

 of dazzling, purest white. Theakstone terms this 

 fly the ' pearl drake,' to my mind an infinitely more 

 appropriate name than that of jenny spinner or 

 spinning jenny. If it is difficult to imitate the 

 iron blue, it is ten times more so to frame any 

 artificial at all comparable with its imago. Nay, 

 it is a matter of downright impossibility to do 

 even the scantiest justice to the beauty of the 

 natural fly. Every material seems dull and 

 opaque beside the filmy, ethereal little insect. 

 The fish feed on it eagerly enough, but I have 



