LOCH-FLIES. 187 



all descriptions, this monster must have seen in his 

 time. The amount of learning in such matters which 

 he must have accumulated during a residence in the 

 loch of probably not less than fifty years, he put to 

 a miserable use in the end selling himself for a 

 very small mess of pottage indeed, as it was a small 

 salmon-fly with which Mr. Muir accomplished the 

 feat. His taking, or rather attempting to take, the 

 fly at all as though hooked outside the jaw he rose 

 at it can be accounted for on no other supposition 

 than that old age had weakened his intellect and 

 impaired his memory. Mr. Muir very properly got 

 him stuffed. 



The common trout in lochs may be captured by 

 any of the methods usually employed in rivers, but 

 the only one of these that can be called sport, and 

 the one that undoubtedly deserves the first notice, is 

 the artificial fly. 



The notion usually entertained, that some par- 

 ticular fly is necessary for every different loch that 

 a fly will not take unless its body is made of some 

 particular dubbing, its wing of some particular feather, 

 and that the least deviation from rule in the colour 

 even of the tail- tuft will injure its usefulness 

 we believe to be altogether erroneous. The pre- 

 vailing opinion, that in order to be successful the 

 artificial fly must be an imitation of some one of the 

 natural flies on the water at the time, will also, 

 when applied to loch -fishing, be found absurd. We 

 should like to know what insects the gaudy-coloured 



