PREFATORY NOTE. 



PROBABLY few persons who visited the late International 

 Fisheries Exhibition in South Kensington could fail to 

 have been struck by the multiplicity, and, to the un- 

 initiated, complexity of the engines and appliances used 

 in the capture of fish. The observation applies even 

 more to the 'angler' a generic term that I have a 

 special objection to, by the way, but let us say to the 

 fisherman who uses a rod than to the 'fisherman' 

 proper, whose weapons are net and hand-line, and who 

 'occupies his business in great waters.' 



In consequence of the growing artfulness of man or 

 of fish, or both, angling has come to be nearly as wide 

 a field for the specialist as doctoring. Each different 

 branch has its own professors, practitioners, and students ; 

 and its gospel as preached by apostles, differing often 

 widely from one another, and perhaps eventually break- 

 ing away altogether from old tradition and founding a 

 cult of their own. Thus the late Mr. W. C. Stewart, a 

 lawyer of Edinburgh and a ' famous fisher ' of the North, 

 may probably be called the apostle of up-stream fly- 



