FLY-MAKING EXPEDIENTS. 63 



To resume our subject, the first essential preliminaries to the 

 operations of fly-dressing are (1) Hands as clean and free from natural 

 grease as possible, for the sake of the more delicate materials, and of the 

 wax on the tying-silk, which any grease is apt to spoil or remove. (2) 

 The thumb-nails and finger-nails fairly long and even, a hint the learner 

 will soon appreciate. (3) The requirement by practice of the proper 

 manner of holding the hook, and an expert familiarity with the four 

 frequently-used operations that form the A B C of all manipulations in 

 fly-dressing, namely 



"THE STOP." 



"THE CATCH." 



" MAKING OFF." 



" SETTING IN." 



In entering upon an explanation of these, it cannot be too strongly 

 impressed upon the learner, that a correct manipulation is of the first 

 importance ; and that he should practise so thoroughly and precisely the 

 minute directions here given as to the exact position of the fingers, etc.,' 

 and the several ways of grasping and holding, that the modes may 

 become habitual to him. That training over, he will find awkwardness 

 and failure in dressing Salmon-flies to be virtually for him among the 

 things of the past. 



In taking the small amount of pains needed for the mastery of this 

 system, it is encouraging to remind ourselves that we start not from 

 the point where our fathers started, but where they left off. We may 

 pluck the fruit of an accumulated experience, learning to adapt the best 

 method known, in each particular detail. These details are, it is true, 

 insisted upon with somewhat tedious particularity ; but then let it not be 

 forgotten that each detail is a dearly bought link in the chain of in- 

 struction. All these little improvements have probably cost, in the 

 aggregate, months of thought, endless bird skins, and furs enough to 

 stuff and cover Chancellors' Woolsacks for a century, to say nothing of 

 friendly discussions and of controversies heated up to the full blaze of 

 the odium piscatorium. 



To the non -military eye the soldiers' little red drill-book does 

 not disclose the generations of thought expended on its mechanical 



