75 



times none. Those two flies, with a trifling 

 alteration in the size of the hook and in the 

 dubbing, will serve for most other trouts as 

 well as the whitling indeed with them and 

 the red hackle, I kill more fish than with all 

 my other flies put together. 



Oliver. Do you not think that there is a 

 good deal of trifling in most books on an- 

 gling on the subject of dressing flies? A 

 person who has never seen a fly dressed is 

 about as likely to learn to dance a hornpipe 

 as to learn to dress a fly by book and when 

 the operation has been once observed, all 

 written directions are mere waste paper. 

 You may teach a boy in ten minutes how to 

 make a wooden whistle from a slender branch 

 of plane-tree or willow, provided you let him 

 see you at work ; but an intelligent man shall 

 not be able, after half a day's study, to form 

 the thing from a mere account of the process 

 upon paper. Most of our teachers of the 

 art of angling are too fond of dilating upon 

 that which their books can give only an 



