32 AX ANGLER'S BASKET. 



many aquatic matters. Some day, I suppose, the hour will 

 come, and the man arise who, after years and years of 

 patient, toilful observation, will tell us all about it. He will 

 study the life -history of the fly through all its wonderful 

 stages at the bottom of the river ; will note how the first 

 creeping stage is affected by intense frost ; how many per 

 cent, perish through inclement atmospheres ; how many live 

 to feed fish without coming to the winged state ; and how 

 many per cent, live to dance out their little lives in "the 

 uncertain glory of an April day," and go through the last 

 necessary stages of their existence in the air ; and what a 

 delightful study it will be to a man who has time and 

 opportunity to go into it thoroughly day by day. There is, 

 to my eye and my thinking, nothing in nature that it was 

 ever yet my lot to see more wonderful, more amazing in its 

 delicate loveliness than what the fly anglers call the " iron- 

 blue dun," just newly hatched from the depths of the cool 

 river, and standing suddenly, as by a miracle, in all the glory 

 of wings on the shining water. Look at it closely. Did 

 you ever see such undefmable tissue, veined so tenderly and 

 coloured so faintly, as you see in these wings wings that 

 even a rude breath will ruin ? Look at the tiny body, 

 perfect in shape and soft as velvet to the touch. Even at 

 the bottom of the dark river Old Mother Nature has been 

 busy putting golden rings around the insect and a crown of 

 brilliant orange on his head, a flattering attention which she 

 omits to pay his future wife. Put him under a microscope 

 and see what the sport of angling reserves for those who will 

 look into the mighty surprises the water has in store for us. 



EFFECTS OF FRESHETS ON SMALL RIVERS. 



Snow is often the ruling factor as regards the hatching 

 of spring flies in all the northern rivers. It not unfrequently 

 happens that a typical warm spring day, in which the sun 



