xiv A BOOK ON ANGLING 



the experience of others as though it were of my own, and of 

 my own origination. I have endeavoured to borrow as little 

 as possible : and where I have been obliged to borrow, I have 

 striven to make the fullest acknowledgment of my indebted- 

 ness, and to do that justice to others which I hope to have done 

 to myself. The branch in which I have been the most com- 

 pelled to borrow is in the trout flies. The reason of this is 

 obvious, as the flies on wliich the trout feed are the same 

 to-day that they were 500 years ago. Perhaps to Mr. Ronalds' 

 'Fly-fisher's Entomology I am the largest debtor, and a better 

 authority one could not borrow from, since it is by far the 

 best work that has ever been written on the subject. But 

 it must not be forgotten that even Ronalds borrowed these 

 flies for the most part in his turn. Let the reader turn to the 

 earliest book published on fly-fishing, and he will there find 

 described by Cotton all the best flies taken by the trout in the 

 present day, and which have been more or less reproduced and 

 described by every subsequent angling writer up to Ronalds. 

 There we find the red-brown (February red), the blue and 

 yellow duns, the house fly, the green drake, the hawthorn, the 

 black gnat, the ant fly, the whirling dun, the peacock, the 

 barm fly, and other flies given by the very names they are now 

 known by : while most of the remaining flies which the modern 

 angler uses are also described, though under other names ; but 

 they can easily be identified by the method of dressing laid 

 down for each of them. These flies, then, are again reproduced 

 in Ronalds, who for the first time describes and classifies them 

 entomologically, thus rendering to the fly-fisher one of the 

 greatest boons conferred upon the art since Cotton's day, as 

 the angler is through Ronalds enabled to identify each fly with 

 nature, and to study its habits and changes. All that I have 

 been able to do while following in so well-marked and beaten 

 a track and it is all that any other author could do has been 

 to make such suggestions upon the dressing of the various flies 

 as may render them, in my opinion, better imitations of nature 

 than have yet been made public, and to select and make such 

 suggestions as to those flies which are the greatest favourites 

 with the fish, as may simplify matters to the beginner. 



In inducting the tyro into the mysteries of the art, I have 

 endeavoured to make every direction and information as clear 

 and practical as possible. This work is intended to be a useful 

 and not merely a decorative one ; thus, the plates are not for 

 the sake of ornamentation, but for direction, and as an aid to 



