NOTE TO THE ISSUE OF 1907 xv 



curlews calling in the solitudes of Cranshaws and 

 Priestlaw. The Whitadder was one of Stewart's 

 many rivers, and he was a king among us if two 

 long seasons, from February to October, may entitle 

 the writer of this modest tribute to account himself 

 sealed of the tribe. For what an age is a year or two 

 of youth when one lived and rejoiced in every day of 

 them ! My Jirst impulse was to hunt for an old 

 fly-book that had been with me for over thirty years 

 unused, and for twenty at least unopened. This is not 

 surprising, for in library parlance it would be classi- 

 fled as a medium quarto. In the fishing circles of my 

 youth there was a robust abhorrence of anything flnni- 

 Jcin, or, as we called it, cockneyfied, and a prodigious 

 veneration for home-made articles. Indeed, the pre- 

 judices of some localities in these trifles would be 

 inconceivable to the modern mind. This particular 

 relic is constructed out of some parchment deeds relat- 

 ing to an Exmoor church, lawfully come by in an 

 Exmoor rectory, and no doubt, therefore, intrinsically 

 worthless. It is interleaved, of course, with generous 

 breadths of flannel, and filled with compartments in 

 the parchment of all shapes and sizes for the storing 

 of flies, casts, silk, fur, feathers, loose hooJcs, scissors, 

 tweezers, and so on ; for most of us made part, at any 

 rate, of our own flies. As a schoolboy I was passing 

 proud of the design, which was thought out somewhat 

 carefully, and above all of the result, contributed to by 

 the deft needle and thread of some female relative. It 

 was not, to be sure, altogether original, being inspired 

 at least, by one that an old gentleman (who taught me 



