74 LUSUS NATURE NOT RELISHED BY TROUT. 



is quite as good as another, so far as the capture of trout 

 is concerned. If these be not their precise words, at 

 least it is their literal meaning. Now to this doctrine 

 I beg most decidedly to demur, as being contrary to 

 experience and common sense. And the only excuse I 

 can offer for otherwise observant masters of the art 

 advancing such an absurd theory, is that such gentlemen 

 have almost entirely been in the habit of pursuing their 

 sport in the rivers and lochs of bleak and mountainous 

 parts of Scotland, where the fish are scarcely ever dis- 

 turbed by the shadow of an angler ; and where insect 

 life is so rare, that not more than two or three different 

 species of fly may ever be seen during the whole season. 

 There, I have no doubt, the unsophisticated natives 

 will occasionally endeavour to gratify their powerful 

 instinct for insect food, by hazarding a snatch at any- 

 thing having a semblance of insect life, however slight 

 it may be. But try such nondescript libels upon Nature's 

 handy-work, as are frequently recommended to the 

 angler's notice, in some of the more southern and much 

 fished waters, where different species of natural insects 

 abound ; and the credulous and deluded specimen of 

 humanity, who pins his faith upon the efficiency of such 

 eccentric creations of the inventive faculty of the angler, 

 will speedily find to his disgust, that neither "Long 

 Torn,"" the Grizzly King," nor " Green Mantle," will 

 effect anything more with the fish, than induce glances 

 of surprise and fear at the grotesque appearance of such 

 monstrous lusus naturae. 



If we take, for example, Stoddart's Standard fly for 



