I'll' A TRANSFORMATION SCENE. 



you have been rummaging out your materials and tying your 

 fly ; and see, a fresh detachment of the iron-blues are sail- 

 ing down the water, and the surface of the water, quiet 

 enough but a few' minutes since, is again alive with fish ; 

 and, as I live, there is your fat friend, who so contemp- 

 tuously left your cast unnoticed a while agone, as busy as 

 ever. Now for it> deftly, deftly ! Well cast, and lightly. 

 Ha! again he rises, and this time yon are revenged for 

 his previous contempt, for you have him fast under * a 

 severe course of steel ' that shall speedily tame his rampant 

 energy. So : safe at last ? A beauty, and two honest 

 pounds in weight, as I am a living angler and a sinner. 

 Bravo ! he will grace your basket right worthily : but lose 

 no time in looking at him ; you will have time for that 

 anon, when the fish have ceased rising again. Always 

 make hay as fast as you can while the sun shines and the 

 iron-blues are coming, swirling thick and fast, and luck 

 l)e with you, brother angler. Three cheers for your iron- 

 blue ! may it be the True Blue ! This is also an indispen- 

 sable sen-ant of the angler's. 



After a few days the iron-blue casts his coat, and you 

 may find yours, perhaps, on some warm evening, covered 

 with the small flecks of their whitish exuviae, 1 and swarms 



1 This more particularly occurs with the later broods of the iron-blue, 

 which come on in Jane and early in July. Mr. Ronalds says upon this 

 point : ' A little dark dun with a brown head, not exactly similar to, but 

 very much like the Iron Blue, is found in August, and then a Spinner like 

 the Jenny Spinner has an orange-coloured head, and the extremity of its 

 body s lighter colour. 



'There is also upon some waters a rather small ephemeral fly, similar 

 in colour to the Jenny Spinner, whose metamorphosis does not change much, 

 in tint, from the original. It is to be found in some seasons upon the 

 Blythe, in Staffordshire ; but upon lake Tal-y-llyn, in North Wales, this 

 insect is so numerous, on warm evenings, as to form clouds, settling upon 

 the dress of a person passing by the lake (or upon any other object), where, 

 in five or ten minutes, it changes its coat, leaving the old one upon the 

 Ire?s, &c., which, if of a dark colour, becomes spangled with seemingly 



