92 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



into those two flies,* and being gathered in the husk or crust, 

 near the time of their maturity, are very easily known and dis- 

 tinguished ; and are of all other the most remarkable, both for 

 their size, as being of all other the biggest, the shortest of them 

 being a full inch long or more, and for the execution they do, the 

 trout and grayling being rhuch more greedy of them than of any 

 others ; and indeed the trout never feeds fat, nor comes into his 

 perfect season, till these flies come in. 



Of these, the green-drake never discloses from his husk, till 

 he be first there grown to full maturity, body, wings, and all ; 

 and then he creeps out of his cell, but with his wings so crimped 

 and ruffled, by being pressed together in that narrow room, that 

 they are, for some hours, totally useless to him ; by which means 

 he is compelled either to creep upon the flags, sedges, and blades 

 of grass, if his first rising from the bottom of the water be near 

 the banks of the river, till the air and sun stiffen and smooth 

 them : or if his first appearance above water happen to be in the 

 middle, he then lies upon the surface of the water like a ship at 

 hull ; for his feet are totally useless to him there, and he cannot 

 creep upon the water, as the stone-fly can, until his wings have 

 got stiffness to fly with (if by some trout or grayling he be not 

 taken in the interim, which ten to one he is), and then his wings 

 stand high, and closed exact upon his back, like the butterfly, and 

 his motion in flying is the same. His body is in some of a paler, 

 in others of a darker yellow, for they are not all exactly of a 

 color, ribbed with rows of green, long, slender, and growing 

 sharp towards the tail ; at the end of which he has three long 

 small whisks of a very dark color, almost black, and his tail 

 turns up towards his back like a mallard ; from whence, ques- 

 tionless, he has his name of the green-drake. These, as I think 

 I told you before, we commonly dape or dibble with ; and having 

 gathered great store of them into a long draw-box, with holes 

 in the cover to give them air, where also they will continue fresh 



* This is a mistake. The stone-fly {Phryganid) alone is from the cadis- 

 worm. The green-drake {Ephenierd) being from a grub that feeds, indeed, 

 under water, not in an artificial case like the other, but in a hole dug in 

 the bank, or under the shelter of loose weeds. — Rennie. 



