FLY-MAKING. 423 



on them. I say this to disabuse you of the erroneous impres- 

 sion that Mr. John Gay's verses, which I quoted just now, 

 may create in your mind. For although they are very good 

 poetry, it is nonsense about providing "all the gay hues 

 that wait on female pride;" and what he says about "the 

 dear purchase of the sable's tail/' or what some other pedantic 

 old fly-fisher says, when he tells you that the tail of a certain 

 fly must be made of " three whisks of a black cat's beard." 

 For you need not go to the furrier's to buy a sable's tail, or 

 go hunting your own or your neighbor's garret for a black 

 cat to get his beard. Only use the most suitable materials 

 you can procure, without spending so much money, or tres- 

 passing on your neighbor, and you will catch a great many 

 Trout before they find out that you have not gone according 

 to Mr. Gay's or Cotton's directions, or your humble servant's 

 either. Let us take up the articles in the order in which we 

 use them. The first is the hook, therefore let us talk about 



HOOKS. The improved Limerick hook of the O'Shaugh- 

 nessy pattern, is by all odds the best for winged flies ; it is 

 not so apt to draw from a fish's mouth without hooking, as 

 the old-fashioned Limerick. I prefer it to the sneck-bend or 

 Aberdeen hook. For Hackles and Palmers, which have no 

 wings, I like a neat fine-wired Kirby, because the point turns 

 to one side, and it is, therefore, more apt to hook a fish, even 

 than the O'Shaughnessy. The reason I do not use the Kirby 

 for winged flies is, that this turning of the point to one side, has 

 a tendency to throw the fly on its side, and prevent it from 

 swimming true ; for the wings of a fly should set upright, 

 that is, they should not incline more to one side than the 

 other. A Hackle or a Palmer having no wings, and the 

 fibres of the hackle-feather, which represent the legs of a 

 caterpillar, or the hairy body of other larvae, sticking out 



