FLIES AND KNOTS. 271 



two makers agreeing, and some indulging in remarkable 

 eccentricities. But as Limerick hooks are generally 

 used for fly-making, the numbers 2, 1, !-, and 2 / will 

 include all that is requisite. No. 1J- is my favorite for 

 ordinary purposes, but a few % may be desirable in 

 heavy water, with an occasional monster for foaming 

 rapids. 



The charges for dressing trout flies in this country are 

 exorbitant, whereas in England they can be purchased 

 of the best makers at from seventy-five cents to a dollar 

 and a half per dozen, ; we are charged from a dollar and a 

 half to three dollars, and generally furnished an inferior 

 article. There is an abominable article of wholesale 

 traffic sold for fifty cents a dozen, that is beneath any 

 sportsman's notice. I have imported a great many, but 

 it is a troublesome operation, and the best way is to bear 

 the imposition meekly. 



The English and Irish salmon flies are, on the con- 

 trary, expensive ; a great deal of the neck and top-knot 

 of the golden pheasant and of the wings of the blue-jay 

 is employed, . birds which cost from ten to twenty-five 

 dollars a piece, and which only furnish twenty to thirty' 

 pairs of each kind of feathers. The use, therefore, of 

 several long crest and neck feathers at fifty cents a pair 

 in the wing, and five or six from the top-knot for the 

 tail, besides other^ expensive materials and the employ- 

 ment of the best workmanship, will make a fly dear at 

 the original cost. Blacker, the great English rod and 

 fly maker, has been paid two guineas apiece for his 

 finest. The reader may console himself by remembering 

 that salmon were taken with the fly before the golden 



