THE SECOND DAY. 



CHAPTER VII. 



VIATOR. 



/"^OME, Sir ! having now well dined, and being again set in 

 ^-^ your little house, I will now challenge your promise, and 

 entreat you to proceed in your instruction for Fly-fishing; 

 which, that you may be the better encouraged to do, I will as- 

 sure you that I have not lost, I think, one syllable of what you 

 have told me ; but very well retain all your directions both for 

 the rod, line, and making a fly, and now desire an account of 

 the flies themselves. 



Pise. Why, Sir, I am ready to give it you, .and shall have 

 the whole afternoon to do it in, if nobody come in to inter- 

 rupt us ; for you must know, besides the unfitness of the day, 

 that the afternoons so early in March signify very little to an- 

 gling with a fly ; though with a minnow, or a worm, something 

 might, I confess, be done. 



To begin then where I left off. My Father Walton tells us 

 but of twelve artificial-flies, to angle with at the top, and gives 

 their names : of which some are common with us here ; and I 

 think I guess at most of them by his description, and I believe 

 they all breed, and are taken in our rivers, though we do not 

 make them either of the same dubbing, or fashion. And it 

 may be in the rivers about London, which I presume he has 

 most frequented, and where 't is likely he has done most execu- 

 tion, there is not much notice taken of many more ; but we 

 are acquainted with several others here, though, perhaps, I 

 may reckon some of his by other names too ; but if I do, I 



