ON SALMON FLIES. 63 



more briskly than flies of darker hues. New run 

 grilse certainly prefer them, as I have found those 

 always fonder of a bright fly (with glittering tinsel 

 and showy colours, even white hackles) than heavy 

 old-run salmon are. Heavy fish keep more in the 

 deep water, and never take the fly well till the river 

 has fallen low and clear, and then sober coloured 

 flies please them best, as likely agreeing better with 

 the low clear state of the water. Clear or coloured 

 water will account for one half of the whole pheno- 

 mena. In discoloured water bright feathers appear 

 as dim as sober colours appear in the clear. 



It is long since we were satisfied that the living 

 type of what we call our salmon flies is not found in 

 fresh waters or produced there, either on the land 

 or in the river. For what, then, the salmon take our 

 flies has been the continued unanswered question. 



From a late brown study on this subject (perhaps 

 the fiftieth I have caught myself in in as many years), 

 I have been pleasurably aroused by the present of a 

 valuable book, from a kind gentleman, entitled "The 

 Earn, its Legends and Fly Fishing," by the Rev. 

 Henry Newland, rector and vicar of Westbourn. In 

 this book, among a variety of pleasing observations 

 and well told anecdotes, the author, supposes the 

 shrimp to be the natural prototype to which our 



