SALMON FLIES 

 "Jock Scott" has had a numerous offspring — ^"Red Jock," "Blue 

 Jock," " Silver Jock " — besides giving the cue to such flies as the " Bull- 

 dog," the " Baron," etc. 



Before leaving the subject of salmon-flies, I will venture to quote, in 

 defence of my scepticism about the importance of colour and material, 

 some extracts from a letter I published in the " Field " newspaper on 

 June 19, 1897, describing certain experiments upon the colour-sense of 

 fish: 



" A few years ago, while commenting in a magazine article on the 

 extravagant importance attached by many salmon-fishers to the 

 exact colours displayed in artificial flies, I ventured to express some 

 doubt whether fish in general, and salmon in particular, were able 

 to distinguish difference in the colour of objects presented to their 

 view, especially when these objects came between their lidless, brow- 

 less eyes and the light. While admitting, what no one can doubt, 

 the intense keenness of their vision and the readiness with which 

 they can distinguish variations in tone from light to dark, I suggested 

 that it was wholly an assumption that fish have the faculty of dis- 

 tinguishing one colour from another of a corresponding shade — say 

 red from green or blue from brown. . . . [After discussing the futility 

 of a priori theories about the preference felt by salmon for certain 

 colours in certain rivers, I made the following proposition:] 



•' Let some floating mayflies be dyed of a bright scarlet (they will 

 reflect about the same amount of light as the ordinary yellowish - 

 grey imitations) and let some devoted searcher for truth use one 

 in a southern stream what time the mayfly is on, and the big trout 

 are sucking down the floating insects by scores. If it were found that 

 the highly educated, nervous trout of an English chalk-stream showed 

 themselves as ready to accept scarlet, pink, sky-blue or yellow imita- 

 tions as the ordinary grey or green drakes, one might surely argue 

 thence that fish have no discriminating sense of colour, and the 

 whole theory and practice of fly-fishing would be subverted. . . . 



" During the present season (1897) I have been fishing in Hertford- 

 shire. ... I had some mayflies dressed (entirely) with scarlet, and 

 others with bright blue, both being shaded on the darker parts of 

 bodies and wings. There was some difficulty in getting the dressers to 

 understand that it was important that the shade of these flies should 

 not be uniform; that there should be dark patches at the head and 



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