234 SALMON FLIES. 



fathers, of sober tastes and simple habits content with 

 fare of the homeliest description, and scornful of new- 

 fangled delicacies, gilded tit-bits, and savoury provoca- 

 tives. They esteemed the speckled feather or white 

 tip of some strutting turkey, the dun plume of the 

 gledd or buzzard, select filchings from the maldrake, teal, 

 or widgeon, along with twitches of home-dyed wool, 

 rough barn -fowl hackles, and the threads of an old 

 service-worn epaulette, better than the combined luxu- 

 ries of Mexico, the Indies, and New Holland. 



Thou silver-headed angler ! canst tell of these better 

 and less degenerate days ? Thy feats are all registered 

 within thee, and that lack-lustre eye regains its olden 

 fire when, with hand outstretched, thou recountest the 

 capture of some goodly fish, the sojourner once of 

 yonder pool whose runs and careerings are to-day as 

 deeply traced on thy memory as if the sward that bears 

 thee were still red and moistened with its blood. Answer 

 me, where in thy day was the doctor ? where the 

 parson ? where the butcher ? where the Childers ? 

 where, in short, all those prismatic rarities that stock so 

 amply the tin and vellum of a modern salmon-fisher ? 

 You possessed them not. It was neither your wish nor 

 your interest to employ them. They were harmful to 

 the salmon in so far only as they alarmed and annoyed 

 it ; and if now and then, in the hands of a stranger, 

 they should chance to draw blood, a dolt of a kelt was 

 at best the only victim. 



I am only, reader, stating a well-known fact, when I 

 affirm that in the time I allude to, the salmon-fishers 

 on Tweedside not only held what is called the Irish fly 

 in absolute ridicule, but actually forbade the use of it on 

 those portions of the river they individually rented; and 

 this they did, not because they deemed it too deadly for 

 every-day use, but solely because they conceived it acted 



