12 



three different kinds of attachment in a minute and a half. The 

 distinctions, moreover, are all really vitally necessary to the per- 

 fection of the system, of which they form an integral part, the 

 hooks being manufactured accordingly. In short the fisherman 

 who proposes to adopt my eyed hooks must also be good enough 

 to adopt the knots for which they are designed. If he lacks either 

 wit enough or will enough to do this, he had much better leave 

 the whole thing alone and go on moistening his gut-hooks by 

 salivary suction till the Greek Kalends. . 



Published testimonies to the success of the eyed hook prin- 

 ciple are too numerous to attempt even to give a summary of them 

 all here. Mr. H. S. Hall, one of our very best clear stream fly- 

 fishers, who has lately written an ably-practical essay on the 

 Dry fly, 1 has, it is well known, given his entire adhesion to eyed 

 hooks, with which, indeed, his name has been long identified. 

 Mr. Frederic M. Halford, author of the lately published charm- 

 ing monograph on " Floating Flies and how to dress them," 2 is 

 another apostle of the new culte. His first chapter is devoted 

 to eyed hooks, and the opening sentence runs thus : 



" Before many years are passed the old-fashioned fly, dressed on a hook 

 attached to a length of gut, will be practically obsolete, the advantages of the 

 Eyed Hook being so manifest that even the most conservative adherents of the 

 old school must, in time, be imbued with this most salutary reform. " 



After enumerating several of the more obvious advantages 

 already noticed, Mr. Halford continues : 



" Flies dressed on eyed -hooks float better and with less drying than those 

 constructed on the old system. . . . Another and, in my opinion, paramount 

 benefit is, that at the very earliest symptom of weakness at the point of juncture 



1. " Badminton Library of Sport," edited by The Duke of Beaufort (1885): 

 Longmans. New Edition. 



2. "Floating Flies and how to dress them" (1886): Sampson Low, 

 Marston, Searle, and Rivington. 



