x FOREWORD 



ing are very laborious, much riding, and many 

 dangers accompany them; but this is still and 

 quiet: and if so be the angler catch no fish, yet 

 he hath a wholesome walk to the brookside, pleasant 

 shade by the sweet silver streams ; he hath good air, 

 and sweet smells of fine fresh meadow flowers, he 

 hears the melodious harmony of birds, he sees the 

 swans, herons, ducks, water herns, coots, &c., and 

 many other fowl, with their brood, which he thinketh 

 better than the noise of hounds, or blast of horns, and 

 all the sport that they can make. 



In the third century the magnum opus of Claudius 

 Aelian, De Natura Animalium^ was written : the 

 seventeenth book of this work contains a most 

 interesting reference to the use of the artificial fly. 

 Aelian refers to the Macedonians, who lived on the 

 banks of the river Astraeus, and were wont to catch 

 a certain spotted fish (in all probability trout) by 

 means of an artificial fly, which they called the 

 hippourus. 1 



The natural fly, from which the kippourus was 

 imitated, was an insect, about the size of a hornet, 

 which buzzed like a bee, and was marked like a 

 wasp : it could not be used in the natural state 

 because it was of too delicate a bloom and of too 

 frail a structure, and it was therefore necessary to 

 imitate it by an artful device. This consisted in 

 wrapping scarlet wool round a hook, and then 

 affixing two wings from the wattles of a cock, suit- 



1 The kippourus was probably so called from its resemblance 

 to the horse -hair crest then worn on helmets. 



