THE MICROBE 



most countries. But revolutions have taken place in 

 fishing as in the greater things of life since those dim 

 and easy-going days. Nevertheless I should still, and 

 do still, when the occasion arises, always mount the 

 same old pattern of red palmer with or without gold 

 twist as a tail fly in clear water up-stream fishing in 

 every stream known to me in Devonshire ; further 

 encouraged if such were needed, by the fact that my 

 contemporaries in that country hold stoutly that 

 nothing has ever been contrived worthy to displace 

 it. Strange insects galore have been dressed since 

 those days. Rods, reels, lines have all been developed 

 almost out of recognition. But the old Devon 

 palmer still, I think, defies time and change in its 

 own country, while as for the blue-upright, even if the 

 wings have in a measure been clipped off, who would 

 venture to mount an April cast at any rate without 

 one. After all, the same old naturals, though wonderful 

 names and classifications have been devised for them 

 by moderns sweltering in the weird vocabulary of dry- 

 fly purism, flit and spin through their brief and happy 

 day along the same old stream. Down in the hidden 

 waters between the alders, the rowans, and the oaks, 

 the whir of a feverish world has passed unheeded, 

 and here at any rate time has stood still, and the old, 

 old melodies are played. 



I plied my glorified bean-stick with unremitting 

 ardour and with a novel delight, that has never yet 

 palled, in the ever-shifting surface and the strange 

 charms of a hill-born stream purling amid banks that 

 were part wood, part meadow, and part heath. I 

 had never been so happy in my brief and unclouded 



