NOTE TO THE ISSUE OF 1907 xix 



every one that sought the waterside m his day ; yet 

 still his main precepts, which came as a startling reve- 

 lation to his contemporaries, and werejiercely disputed, 

 remain as guiding principles in the pursuit of Scottish 

 trout. Of Scottish trout, I say ; for revolution has 

 run a different, but simultaneous, course in south- 

 country waters, where nobody now dreams of success 

 save by means of the dry-fly. Yet the two revolutions 

 have this main feature in common, that whereas trout 

 always lie with their heads up-stream, and perceive an 

 enemy approaching from the front at a much greater 

 distance than one coming up behind them, the angler 

 must cast his line up-stream instead of down, as was 

 the invariable custom fifty years ago. This precaution 

 is so simple, so obvious one should say so elementary 

 that the marvel is that it never occurred to anybody 

 to adopt it until it was prescribed by Stewart. Yet how 

 many of Stewart's unconscious disciples know so much 

 as the name of * The Practical Angler ' save as denot- 

 ing a form of worm-tackle devised by him which 

 thing is an unkvnd stroke of fate, inasmuch as Stewart 

 was above all things a fly-fisher. Like all successful 

 revolutionaries, he was a sceptic. No scoffer, indeed, 

 bid profoundly incredulous of the superstitious nicety 

 and variety in artificial files prescribed by previous 

 writers. He cut down the prodigious catalogue m 

 Ronald's ' Fly -fisher's Entomology ' to very few pat- 

 terns, and these were not laborious portraits of indi- 

 vidual species. It sufficed that they should bear a 

 general resemblance to fiying insects. Well, here 

 comes Messrs. A. and C. Black's pretty new edition 



