AND ANGLING SONGS. 193 



ground- work for an efficient fly-stock commit me in practice to 

 such combinations, and no others, as I have recommended. 



On Tweedside, in the neighbourhood of Kelso, a standard list 

 of artificial trouting-flies has gradually been elaborated, in the 

 hands of John Forrest and Son, and James Wright of Sprouston, 

 unquestionably the best fly-dressers in Scotland, if not in Great 

 Britain. About twenty years ago, scarcely any of the flies in 

 this list were regarded as imitations of insects, or had been 

 dignified with names which, although not strictly speaking ento- 

 mological, implied that the artistic productions bearing them 

 were representations, in their place and season, of certain natural 

 insects. Of the very few so distinguished, what is termed the 

 March Brown was one, and the Green Drake probably another. 

 But the generality of flies in the catalogue were not then char- 

 acterized as resemblances to any known water-insect, ephemeral 

 or otherwise, beyond the occasional application of such vague 

 terms as midges, gnats, spiders, and palmers. They were named 

 sometimes from the material of which they were chiefly com- 

 posed, or from a prevailing colour or other peculiarity pertaining 

 to it. For instance, the terms red, brown, or black hackles, 

 harelugs, duns, and white-tips, were understood to be sufficiently 

 descriptive of certain standard flies. The names of individuals, 

 also, in whose hands a particular combination of materials and 

 colour had proved disastrous to the finny tribe, were wont to be 

 assigned to others of our artificial lures. As an example of this, 

 away from any fixed locality, I may cite Hoffland's Fancy. The 

 angler now-a-days, however, is not content with such homely and 

 characteristic appellations, but must frame, even in regard to 

 the old-established lures which bear them, some excuse for intro- 

 ducing an entomological arrangement, and for subjecting them 

 to the control of a theory which experience teaches is incorrect, 

 a few exceptional cases forming its only ground of support. 



In the making up of a working or efficient fly-stock, the grand 



