226 FISHING GOSSIP. 



with salmon 'battues, would of course look upon the 

 moderate fishing of the Dee as " stale, flat, and un- 

 profitable." For minds so diseased, the costly, though 

 not always productive preserves of Scotland, or the 

 yet unexhausted fjords of Northern Europe, can alone 

 administer the suitable remedy. Failing these, there 

 is yet balm in Gilead for heroic Waltonians a berth 

 in the next whaler from Peterhead or Aberdeen, and 

 a run amongst the virgin streams flowing into the 

 Polar basin. Happy the angler, who, deaf to the 

 seductions of ambition and the despotism of fashion, 

 can betake himself to some unhackneyed stream 

 amongst the hills, or modestly flowing between ranks 

 of meadow-sweet and flag-iris in the plain, and make 

 his own skill and the manipulation of his tackle the 

 sources of pleasure, not surpassed in the more aspiring 

 walks of the art. 



The salmon-flies in general use on the Dee claim 

 that especial adaptation to the locality demanded by 

 almost all other rivers. If we are to receive implicitly 

 the theories of local fly-dressers, there can be no doubt 

 of a distinct centre of creation of flies for every sal- 

 mon stream in these islands. Huxley and Owen may 

 dispute the problem in the case of man and other 

 animals as long as they like, but in those curious com- 

 pounds of pigs'-wool, feathers, and fish-hooks, called 

 by courtesy or poetic licence salmon-flies, a separate 

 genesis must be assumed as an established fact. Ac- 



