MARCH FLIES 149 



with careful judgment and nice discrimination having selected 

 the boughs most fitted for the purpose as overhanging the 

 water, relinquish their hold (a pretty firm one, by the way) for 

 the sole purpose of dropping into the water that they may be 

 gobbled up by the trout below. This is the only way they can 

 get into the water, for a heavy insect like this is not blown about 

 like a fly. I do not mean to say that a variety of caterpillars, 

 as well as beetles and other insects, do not drop from the trees 

 into the water. There are many of them which particularly 

 affect such places and the kind of trees which grow there, but 

 I do not think the Arctia caja caterpillar is one of them, 

 gardens being its favourite locality, so much so that the moth 

 is called " the garden tiger." The percentage of these palmers, 

 therefore, which find their way into the rivers thus must 

 necessarily be very small so small, indeed, as to offer very 

 few opportunities to the trout of ascertaining their flavour ; and 

 it is a very great question if more than one trout in a hundred 

 ever has in his lifetime an opportunity of becoming acquainted 

 with it. I can only say that in all my experience, and that is 

 not short or little, I never remember but once or twice to have 

 seen this caterpillar drifting on the water, and then why then 

 I threw it there myself to experimentalise. 



As regards the taste of a chub for them, all that can be said 

 is, that there is no small animal or large insect of any kind, or 

 imitation thereof, which you can throw to him which he will 

 not seize and devour with avidity ; and I equally believe that 

 there is nothing that can be dressed with fur and feathers in 

 the shape of insect or fly which some trout or other will not 

 be rash enough to dash at, at times. What is more common 

 than for a trout to lay hold of a salmon fly half as big as him- 

 self ? What does he mistake that for ? For the tiger-moth 

 itself possibly, upon which he is so in the habit of feeding. 

 Granting even the palmer theory, can the trout mistake the 

 small insect dressed with some three turns of a red hackle and 

 half a strand of herl for a huge hairy caterpillar of more than 

 a dozen times its size ? Is this reasonable, or is it not simple 

 nonsense ? Then, it is often called the coch y bondu, when 

 dressed with a hackle with a black centre. Now, if this really 

 be meant for an imitation of the coch y bondu, it is a very bad 

 one. The coch y bondu, which is identical with the bracken 

 clock, the Marlow buzz, the shorn fly, the fern webb, etc. etc., 

 is not a fly or palmer but a winged beetle, like unto a very 

 small cockchafer, and which makes its appearance in some 





