SALMON FLIES 

 fish when these materials are presented to it between its eye and a strong 

 light, unless that eye is endowed with powers denied to human organs 

 of vision. The only coloured rays that can reach the retina of the fish 

 are those transmitted through such substances as dyed wool and hackles. 

 Delicacy of hue in an opaque substance like floss silk, which is so largely 

 used in fiy-dressing, can have no effect whatever upon the salmon's 

 organ of sight. 



3. What we call a salmon-fly is an arbitrary combination of silk, fur, 

 feathers, etc., formed after the image of no real creature, and described 

 as a " fly " because it corresponds in arrangement to a trout-fly, which 

 may be a close imitation of a real insect. 



It requires but a slight exercise of imagination to understand whence 

 the remarkable empyrical doctrine about the merits of various salmon- 

 flies has arisen. We do not, indeed, know when or where fly-fishing 

 for salmon was first practised in the British Isles. Izaak Walton, as 

 aforesaid, knew nothing about it; but Izaak's contemporary and rival, 

 Richard Franck, was an accomplished fly -fisher, and a far better natu- 

 ralist than Izaak, at whom he girds for '* stuffing his indigested octavo 

 with other men's notions," and laughs at his statement that pike were 

 bred from pickerel weed. Richard, writing nearly three hundred years 

 ago, was as firmly convinced of the need for humouring the salmon's 

 sense of colour as is the most dogmatic Tweed boatman of the twentieth 

 century. 



" Remember always to carry your dubbing-bag about with you, 

 wherein there ought to be silk of all sorts, threads, thrums, moccado- 

 ends and cruels of all sizes and variety of colours; diversified and 

 stained wool, with dog's and bear's hair, besides twisted fine threads 

 of gold and silver, with feathers from the capon, partridg, peacock, 

 pheasant, mallard, smith, teal, snite, parrot, heronshaw, para- 

 ketta, bittern, hobby, phlimingo or Indian flush; but the mockaw, 

 without exception, gives flames of life to the hackle. . . . Should any 

 man, under the pretence of an artist, remain destitute of these pre- 

 noted qualifications — proclaim him a blockhead; let him angle for 

 oisters! "* 

 It is evident from this that considerable refinement had been intro- 

 duced into the composition of salmon-flies by the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century; but in all Richard Franck's entertaining treatise there 



'Northern Memoirs, p. 178, edition of 1821. 



o 41 



