xviii THE PRACTICAL ANGLER 



the March Brown was thick on the water he would 

 usually put one on ; but he held that any other of his 

 half-dozen stock varieties of the same size was just as 

 serviceable. I have myself of ten Jished through heavy 

 rises of March Brown, for which the Welsh Dee is 

 notable, and am forced to own that the Orange Dun or 

 February Red, or whatever the second jly might be, has 

 been sometimes just as effective ; though not to have a 

 March Brown mounted, and that too of the popular 

 local tying, would require a robustness of faith, or 

 lack of it, that only Stewart perhaps was capable of. 

 It is certainly difficult for any one who once came 

 within Stewards influence, directly or indirectly, who 

 knew his rivers and was face to face with his methods 

 and their results, ever to recover entirely from the 

 effect of his convincing demonstrations, ." 



In "Jottings of a Naturalist" which from time to 

 time he contributes to the " Scottish Review" Sir 

 Herbert Maxwell wrote : 



" Mr. Earl Hodgson has given me more than com- 

 mon pleasure more than he can have reckoned on in 

 sending me his new edition of Stewart's ' Practical 

 Angler .' First published half a century ago, this 

 little work honestly earned the title of epoch-making ; 

 for there are epochs in small affairs as well as in large 

 concerns, and Stewards book proclaimed a revolution 

 in Scottish trout-fishing. Much water has run under 

 Kelso bridge since the new doctrine was enunciated; 

 Stewart calculated that there were twenty anglers at 

 the time he wrote for every one fifty years before. It 

 may be safely assumed that there are twenty now for 



