100 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



usually taken. You are to know that there are as many sorts 

 of flies as there be of fruits : I will name you but some of them ; 

 as the Dun-fly, the Stone-fly, the Red-fly, the Moor-fly, the 

 Tawney-fly, the Shell-fly, the Cloudy or Blackish-fly, the 

 Flag-fly, the Vine-fly: there be qf flies, Caterpillars, and 

 Canker-flies, and Bear-flies : and indeed too many either for me 

 to name, or for you to remember. And their breeding is so 

 various and wonderful, that I might easily amaze myself, and 

 tire you in a relation of them. 



And, yet, I will exercise your promised patience by saying a 

 little of the Caterpillar, or the Palmer-fly,* or worm; that by 

 them you may guess what a work it were, in a discourse, but 

 to run over those very many flies, worms, and little living 

 creatures, with which the sun and summer adorn and beautify 

 the river banks and meadows, both for the recreation and 

 contemplation of us anglers ; pleasures which, I think, myself 

 enjoy more than any other man that is not of my profession. 



Pliny holds an opinion, that many have their birth or being 

 from a dew that in the spring falls upon the leaves of trees ; 

 and that some kinds of them are from a dew left upon herbs 

 or flowers; and others, from a dew left upon coleworts or 

 cabbages : all which kinds of dews being thickened and con- 

 densed, are by the sun's generative heat, most of them, 

 hatched, and in three days made living creatures : f and these 

 of several shapes and colours ; some being hard and tough, some 

 smooth and soft; some are horned in their head, some in their 

 tail, some have none ; some have hair, some none ; some 

 have sixteen feet, some less, and some have none : but (as our 

 Topsel, in his History of Serpents, hath with great diligence 

 observed) those which have none move upon the earth, or upon 

 broad leaves, their motion being not unlike to the waves of the 

 sea. Some of them he also observes to be bred of the eggs of other 

 Caterpillars, J and that those in their time turn to be butterflies ; 

 and again, that their eggs turn the following year to be Cater- 

 pillars. And some affirm, that every plant has its particular fly 

 or Caterpillar, which it breeds and feeds. I have seen, and may 

 therefore affirm it, a green Caterpillar, or worm, as big as a 



* What anglers call a Palmer is any caterpillar, and it is called a fly, 

 though it has no wings; because, in angling, they trail it like a fly over 

 the water. J. R. 



f All that Walton writes about insects shews the extreme ignorance 

 which then prevailed respecting natural history. Redi, by his ingenious 

 experiments, exploded the notion so long prevalent of flies being bred 

 from putrid meat ; and though Blumenbach, Cuvier, Lamarck, and most 

 of our eminent modern naturalists, again reverted to the doctrine of 

 equivocal or spontaneous generation, particularly in minute animalcules, 

 even this has been very recently exploded by the observations of M. 

 Ehrenberg of Berlin. J. R. 



I No Caterpillars lay eggs, though all are hatched from eggs, laid by 

 Butterflies, Moths, or Sand-flies J. R. 



