Mr. Pulman's Theories 



stantly changing his flies when fishing, 

 thereby perplexing himself, and, gen- 

 erally speaking, wasting time. Fish 

 are proverbially capricious, and many 

 of their habits, in regard to feeding 

 and otherwise, depend on circumstances 

 which, with all our knowledge of 

 natural history, are not understood. 

 The angler, therefore, must not be too 

 ready to attribute his want of success 

 at any time to a mistake in the selec- 

 tion of his fly. There are many cir- 

 cumstances to which it may with 

 greater justice be traced. For in- 

 stance, a certain fly is often thought- 

 lessly said to be refused by fish on the 

 sole account of its dissimilarity to some 

 supposed favorite species, when a little 

 observation would lead to another con- 

 clusion a conclusion perhaps very dif- 

 ferent from the probably correct one, in 

 many cases, of the unskilfulness of the 



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