180 FISHING IN EDEN 



askance at the man who frightened the fish away by 

 two great a show of entomological knowledge at the 

 end of his cast. He classified his insects according 

 to the times of their coming on to the water, their 

 stay, behaviour, habitat, and appearance to the eye. 

 Generic and specific names did not trouble him in 

 the least. 



It has been far too customary to describe fisher- 

 men of the local type as blind followers of a 

 " chuck and chance it " method. By inference 

 some writers have set them down merely as winners 

 by accident " flukists." There is certainly a naive 

 kind of simplicity about their sport which some 

 cocksure men might easily take for ignorance. If 

 it had been at all possible to turn a nature-lover 

 like " Bob " away from himself into the realm of the 

 didactic, and doctrinal, in fishing his imagination 

 and sense of the river must surely have perished. 

 Then he would not haye been the lodestone, the 

 native magnet, which drew together the school round 

 the old kitchen hearth. He would have been a 

 second Squeers, and the mental growth of his pupils 

 would have been retarded, and perhaps entirely 

 stopped, by hunger of the soul. 



The best type of local angler does not fake 

 his flies. He uses his feathers with the utmost 

 simplicity and economy. There is great restraint 



