186 KXTOMOLOGY V. COLOROLOGY. 



In giving a list of artificial flies I shall as much as pos- 

 sible eschew all flies which I do not know from experience 

 to be useful to the angler. There are scores of flies which 

 are set down in lists, and which are perpetuated from list 

 to list, being copied from one to the other like the cele- 

 brated 'Hampstead Eye ' butterfly, of which there is only 

 a legend of a solitary specimen but which are by no 

 means to be generally relied upon. Such flies I shall 

 have nothing to do with. 



There are two conflicting systems, in support of \vliich 

 we find warm partisans and good anglers on either side ; 

 viz. the entomological and what may be termed the 

 colorological system, or those who study and imitate 

 nature as closely as possible, and those who say ' the day 

 is bright and the water clear, or the day is cloudy and the 

 water coloured, and therefore such and such colours ought 

 to kill. 1 I shall touch upon their respective merits and 

 claims. Throughout the kingdom thousands of trout 

 flies are in use, and almost any fly or insect which can 

 fall upon the water will at times, if it be little fished, be 

 taken by the trout. On the other hand, the reverse of 

 this is more often true, and the trout are picksome and 

 hard to please. It will often, too, occur, when trout are 

 feeding strongly upon a particular fly, that they will take 

 something entirely different in preference to a bad imita- 

 tion of the insect they are feeding on, or even a fair imi- 

 tation put over them in a somewhat different way from 

 those which are passing over them, because the one does 

 not challenge comparison while the other does, from which 

 the cohrologists argue that it is not necessary to trouble 

 your head at all with considerations of what is on the 

 water. But there are times, again, when the fish will 

 be rising furiously, and the angler 'may exhaust his 

 tackle-book over them, without getting a rise if he has 

 not the exact flv. I could cite hundreds of instances of 



