AND ANGLING SONGS. 



THE ANGLER'S FLY-STOCK. 



A MASTER in the art, Christopher North soared loftily above 

 the conceits and prejudices of contemporary anglers. He was 

 decidedly of the old Scottish school, and despised the pedantry 

 of linking too closely entomological science with the fabrication 

 of the artificial trouting-fly. His ideas on this subject, I have 

 reason to believe, harmonized with those expressed in an article 

 on angling in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which emanated 

 from the pen of his brother, the late James "Wilson, F.R.S.E., a 

 much-esteemed author and naturalist, as well as a high authority 

 on the subject of fly-fishing. His voyage in the Government 

 yacht, the ' Princess Royal/ round the coast of Scotland, in 

 company with the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, embraces the 

 relation of several fishing-excursions, in all of which his views 

 as to the construction of a killing artificial fly were adhered to 

 and successfully followed out. The theory advanced by Mr. 

 Wilson amounts simply to this, that with three or four combina- 

 tions of feathers, dubbing, and silk, adapting the size of the hook 

 and quantity of material used to the state of water, atmosphere, 

 etc., you may, throughout the season, n any river or loch in 

 Scotland, secure as good sport as you would with the most 

 approved imitations of the natural insect. Such combinations,* 

 for instance, as the woodcock-wing and hare-lug, a red or brown 

 hackle winged with the well-known speckled brown feather taken 

 from the back of the mallard ; and a black hackle, either wingless 

 altogether, or else furnished in that particular from the starling, 

 snipe, or landrail, may be adduced in illustration. I am aware 

 that a reduction of the fly-stock to so limited a compass would 

 not meet with much favour, or gain any great amount of con- 

 fidence, on the banks of many of the rivers in the south of 

 England. I am also aware that there are trouting-streams of 



