52 Dry-Fly Fishing. 



friend of mine used to say, " is a stealing thing," 

 and may easily become an objectionable practice. 

 Indeed, too much eating and drinking while fishing 

 make one less active in the pursuit of sport. As a 

 non-smoker, I perhaps miss some pleasant 

 dreaming, but I have a little less weight to bear, no 

 tobacco-pouch, cigar-case, pipe, match-box, &c. 



I have now come to the importatn subject 

 of flies, and I am confident that my articles 

 published in the leading sporting periodicals 

 over my well-known pseudonym will be of service, 

 if again and again referred to, to indicate the 

 successful flies to use in the Itchen, Test, Avon, 

 Wye, and elsewhere, under the varying con- 

 ditions of the weather, of the water, the rise of 

 ephemerae, trichoptera, or lepidopterous insects, and 

 of the time of year. And I may add that, in 

 whatever river I have fished in England, Scotland, 

 and Wales, I have often found the same lures 

 answer (with the addition, perhaps, of one or two 

 favourite local patterns which it is always wise to 

 try), accounting for good sport obtained with the 

 dry-fly from 1880 to the present year. 



The entomological names of the flies agree so 

 little with tfre present nomenclature of artificial 

 flies, and the latter so imperfectly represent the 

 natural ones, especially as regards imago wings, 

 that it is a constant source of wonderment what 



