FLY -MAKING. 437 



there is more detail and elaboration, they do not require the 

 same delicate manipulation that Trout-flies do. 



It is much better to learn to tie a fly without a hand- vice 

 or spring-pliers. If one's fingers are long and pliant, the 

 knack can be acquired with perseverance. Those who use 

 only their fingers are the great masters in the art. If your 

 fingers are clumsy or dumpy, these accessories should be 

 used ; but the abominable permanent vice screwed to a table, 

 as depicted in the books of some of my co-laborers in this 

 " field of science," no one should resort to, unless he has ten 

 thumbs on his two hands ; and even to such persons the pin- 

 vice which I have pictured on a preceding page would be 

 more convenient. 



A few pages back I deprecated the use of hackles with 

 long fibres on small hooks ; there is also another vanity 

 which is "done under the sun" by tackle-makers. I am 

 ashamed to own that it is purely an Americanism. Irishmen, 

 and even the London tackle-makers with all their cockney 

 foolery, have never perpetrated such a thing. It was origi- 

 nated by some New York angler, without regard to truth or 

 nature, and the tackle-stores there have perpetuated the hum- 

 bug, and imposed these deformities on greenhorns ever since. 

 I refer to those short- winged, pot-bellied flies ; there are 

 several of them ; one is known as the " Deer-fly." No such 

 fly daps on the water or hovers over its surface to deposit its 

 eggs, any more than a bumble-bee does. The Deer-fly, if 

 found in nature at all, is the very opposite of flies that Trout 

 feed on, such as the gossimer-winged ephemera, which soars 

 and flits through the air, like a thought in a dream, while the 

 imitation of the other, with its big body and short wings, is 

 more like the picture of a Dutch angel on a pane of painted 

 glass. Do not buy them, do not make them ; they are gross 

 humbugs. 



