PREFATORY NOTE 



(BY THE AUTHOR.) 



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- 



