DEE SIDE JOTTINGS. 227 



cording to the new philosophy the subject has passed 

 the metaphysical method of investigation, and taken 

 rank amongst the proved items of M. Comte's Posi- 

 tivism. By the advocates of this doctrine we are as- 

 sured that salmon would commit suicide by inanition 

 sooner than they would rise to a fly that was not born 

 and bred on the banks of their own river. It must be 

 of the true local sui generis description to suit the tastes 

 and habits of these scrupulous Brahmins of the stream. 

 I have often in my angling peregrinations sought to 

 trace the origin of the favourite lures of most rivers, 

 but cannot add that I have been successful. "When 

 I inquired who the daring Prometheus was that stole 

 fire from heaven and animated these monsters into 

 an ephemeral popularity, I was generally referred for 

 their paternity to the priest, the parson, the doctor, 

 the half-pay captain, and the Waterloo pensioner of 

 the village, who had only two real legs and an eye 

 and a half between them. The fact was the latter, 

 poor fellow ! had just been couched for cataract by 

 the salmon doctor, who left half the membrane still 

 floating in the aqueous chamber of the one eye he 

 had, and thus sadly reduced his patient's optical re- 

 sources as a "judge of colours." Sometimes I found 

 it was the village barber, cobbler, but above all a 

 certain mysterious tinker, who " like a shadow came 

 and so departed," that bequeathed to posterity the 

 invaluable secret of some of these infallible lures. 



