How Fish-hooks are Made. 



49 



from the gratification of a very laudable curiosity, be of 

 any advantage to you who have so patiently followed it 

 to its end. But if you tie your own flies, or even if you 

 do not, this will requite you for your labor and patience. 

 I allude to a test to be applied to each hook, so that the 

 bad may be infallibly separated from the good. 



Two pins, a a, are inserted in a block, B (see Fig. 16). 

 The hook is placed between them as shown, and the 

 shank end bent outward with the 

 hand (see dotted line) until it 

 strikes a pin, , placed near the 

 position shown. If the hook breaks, 

 of course that ends it. If it fails to 

 return to its original form when re- 

 leased, it is too soft to be reliable, 

 and should at once be rejected. 



Were it not for the iron bands of 

 literary custom, I would print at the 

 head of each page of this book, in- 

 stead of its title, the words KEM EM- 

 UK i: TO TEST YOUR TACKLE. They 



embody the angler's Golden Rule. 

 A few years since I went fishing down in Pennsylva- 

 nia, a hundred miles by rail and some twenty odd by 

 stage. The trout of that State have quite kept up with 

 the progress of the age, and the angler who expects 

 much pleasure at their expense, will need to employ all 

 the resources of his art. A box of beautiful little hooks 

 was purchased for the occasion, and a quantity of beguil- 

 ing flies tied thereon. What was the matter I could not 

 tell. Rise after rise was followed by miss after miss at 

 the strike, till a bump of conceit, which at first was quite 

 protuberant, gradually fell to the dead level of medioc- 



4 



Pig. 16. 



