PRACTICE BETTER THAN PRECEPT. 7 



deem it unnecessary to multiply quotations from 

 ancient authors, whether sacred or profane ; but 

 shall rest satisfied with pointing out, at the close 

 of this portion of our volume, the principal works 

 on angling which have appeared in our own lan- 

 guage, and in relation to the practice of the art in 

 British streams. 



As expert angling never was and never will be 

 successfully taught by rule, but is almost entirely 

 the result of assiduous and long-continued practice, 

 we purpose being very brief in our general disquisi- 

 tion on the subject. We shall commence by stat- 

 ing our belief that fly-fishing, by far the most 

 elegant and interesting branch of the art, ought 

 not to be regarded exclusively as an art of imita- 

 tion. It no doubt depends on deception, which 

 usually proceeds on the principle of one thing being 

 successfully substituted in the likeness of another ; 

 but Bacon's distinctive definitions of simulation arid 

 dissimulation place the subject in a truer light. 

 As simulation consists in the adoption or affecta- 

 tion of what is not, while dissimulation consists in 

 the careful concealment of what really is the one 

 being a positive, the other rather a negative act so 

 the great object of the fly-fisher is to dissimulate in 

 such a manner as to prevent his expected prey from 

 detecting the artificial nature of his lure, without 

 troubling himself by a vain effort to simulate or 

 assume, with his fly, the appearance of any indivi- 

 dual or specific form of insect life. There is, in 

 truth, little or no connection between the art of 

 angling and the science of entomology ; and there- 



