BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. xxy 



Phoenician (purple) wool, and then tied on two feathers, 

 or the wattles of a cock's neck, of a wax color. This 

 they threw with a pole or reed, an opyvii, four cubits long 

 (there must be a mistake here, for, at the utmost, that 

 would not be more than seven or eight feet) and a line of 

 the same length. These cunning artifices they threw on 

 the water, and the fish, attracted by the appearance of the 

 pretty insect they leed upon, seized the bait, and were 

 caught." This account by ^lian (never the most correct 

 writer), is very bungling, but we can guess at what the 

 truth was. The flies were nothing else than our May-fly, 

 or green and grey drakes, and the main material was not 

 the wattles, but the ever-killing hackle. Make the rod just 

 twice as long, and the line five times as long as that, and 

 you have the tools of a fly-fisher. I doubt not, that the use 

 of the fly among the mountains, or wherever the trout are 

 found, is nearly as old as the first knowledge that trout were 

 delicate eating. " There is nothing new under the sun." 

 I believe that the credit of discovering this curious passage 

 in ^Elian, is due to the author of Scenes and Recollections 

 in Fly-Fishing, who writes himself Stephen Oliver, the 

 younger, of Aldwark in Com. Eber., but whose real name 

 is concealed. At least I am indebted to him for my first 

 knowledge of it. (See p. 37, of his well- written book ; 

 Lond. : 1834.) 



Having finished these rapid notices of Fishing and books 

 on Fishing among the ancients, let us take a leap down to 

 more modern times. 



It has already been said that angling, even angling with 

 the fly, was practised by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors in 

 very remote times. The first printed treatise on " Fysh- 

 YNGE WYTH AN Angle " (of which more particular mention 

 will soon be made), describes a few flies suitable for the 

 several months, the substance of which is given by Walton 

 (i., 5) as " lately given to him by an ingenious brother of 

 the angle, and a most excellent flie-fishcr ;" and, in truth, 



B* 



