MAD MEN AND MAD FISH. 49 



they name them, imitations. The majority of man- 

 kind are mad on one subject or another. Perhaps 

 the majority of animals are similarly so. These 

 mad fly-fishers are successful, no doubt, because 

 they meet with mad fish, which are more readily 

 taken with fantastic flies than with naturally co- 

 loured and shaped ones. That is the only way I 

 can account for their heterodoxy. 



My friends, do not mind what these cracked 

 sectarians say. They are learned philosophers, 

 writing the article "Angling "in ponderous ency- 

 clopsedias, from visionary data, but we are lowly 

 scatterers of information gathered by the water- 

 side. We grant that there is very great difficulty 

 in imitating, by means of feathers, fur, wool, &c., 

 the water-insects fish feed upon, but we maintain 

 that a fair deceptive imitation can be made, and 

 that it is beyond all comparison more attractive 

 to fish than no imitation at all. We maintain that 

 the less imperfect an imitation, the more attrac- 

 tive will it be found in fishing. 



We said that philosophers, naturalists with 

 barnacles on nose, reading insect nature through 

 the glass-cases of museums, find, they assert, no 

 likeness whatsoever between the natural fly and 

 what, to the vulgar, appears the best artificial imi- 

 tation ever dressed. The microscope, they cry, 

 proves this. An unjaundiced human eye proves 

 quite another thing. See if it does not. 



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