VARIETIES. 71 



satisfactory, still there are artists of great skill and 

 merit who fashion their lures upon quite a different 

 system ; nor, in fact, does there exist any fixed scroll 

 of regulations for the fly-dresser to hold by. No doubt, 

 it is quite allowable for him to experimentalize a certain 

 length, and vary, not merely his materials, but his mode 

 of putting them together ; for instance, instead of finish- 

 ing off at the body or tail of the insect, he may do so, 

 more tastefully, at the head or with the wings ; he may 

 also, by way of change, leave the wings undivided or 

 append them so as to turn over, and thus maintain a 

 more upright and life-like position, when drawn along 

 the water's surface. 



But while conceding, in this respect, to the fly- 

 dresser, I must maintain that there is no real service 

 done to the angler, as regards trouting flies, by a multi- 

 plication of their names and varieties, or by useless 

 disquisitions upon certain virtues peculiar to this or 

 that imitation; nay, further, I regard, as unessential 

 and elaborately trifling, the attempts made by many 

 theoretical writers on the subject of angling, to sort out 

 and classify, according to the month, the different 

 ephemeral and water insects which they think it neces- 

 sary should be included in the stock of the fly-fisher. 

 I am of opinion that, with a hare-lug, a brown and 

 a black hackle these three it being a matter of in- 

 difference whether the wing adapted to them is formed 

 of the brown mallard, the woodcock, landrail, or grouse 

 feather, or indeed whether the hackles are provided 

 with wings at all, I express my belief, founded on the 

 experience of more than twenty years, that, with the three 

 simple fabrications above mentioned, accommodating 

 them in point of size to the season and state of water, 



