There have, it is well-known, been numerous attempts in 

 former and in recent years to introduce some form of direct 

 attachment between the trace and its steel appendage (the 

 advantages of which are so self-evident), and many forms of 

 eyed-hooks have been invented with that object : hooks with turn- 

 up eyes, hooks with * needle ' eyes, hooks with ' straight ' eyes, 

 hooks with ' crooked ' eyes cum multis aliis but none of these 

 have obtained any very general or ready acceptance on the part 

 of the fishing public. Indeed I may say that all the patterns of 

 eyed-hooks I have personally examined and tested are open to 

 serious practical objections of one sort or another either in 

 connection with the make or position of the eye, or in regard to 

 the mode of knotting it on to the line, objections which doubt- 

 less explain their partial or non-success. I trust, however, that 

 their inventors pioneers, explorers and discoverers in the new 

 field, to whose labours I more than any one else am indebted * 

 will not imagine that I desire for one moment to depreciate in 

 any way their excellent work ; still less to exalt my own small 

 efforts at their expense. Indeed it is want of space simply, and 

 not want of courtesy, which precludes my attempting, within the 

 limits of this little brochure, to pourtray and describe their several 

 ingenious plans the progenitors, so to speak, of my own system 

 and especially the turn-up eyed-hook of my friend Mr. H. S. 

 Hall, which is now used by many first-rate fly-fishers, whose 

 enthusiasm carries them triumphantly over all obstacles, or what 

 I regard as defects. . . I have, nevertheless, a plain task set 

 before me of which I must acquit myself in a plain businesslike 

 way. What I have to say and without the saying of which this 



* To the Editor also of the Fishing Gazette, the columns of which have for 

 several years been frankly and freely opened to the discussion of this all- 

 important angler's quczstio vexata, the thanks of the angling public, and my 

 own in particular, are also largely due. Without such sympathetic and dis- 

 criminating assistance 1 have no hesitation in saying that the matter would not 

 now have reached its present practical and complete form. 



B 



