84 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER 



One is tempted to suspect him of repeating phrases, 

 not because his reason has consented to the thought 

 expressed in them, but because, having been so fre- 

 quently employed by others, they are not to be omitted 

 with propriety. I have just been reading an invaluable 

 little text-book for the use of students of the gentle 

 art, the author of which, after assuring us that we 

 must copy nature in the most minute detail, affirms, 

 with curious inconsistency, that while the winged fly is 

 " decidedly the closer imitation of the natural insect," 

 the hackle is "out and out the most (sic) deadly." 



There may be, somewhere, trout so preternaturally 

 sharp that they refuse an artificial fly, because in some 

 trivial detail of colour it differs slightly from its proto- 

 type, but it has never been my privilege to meet with 

 them. The fish, in the pursuit of which I have spent 

 my leisure, were much less exacting ; they did not 

 demand a lure dressed, even approximately, in the 

 likeness of " the fly on the water or due to be there ; " 

 so indiscriminating were they and so simple, that they 

 willingly accepted any lure that did not too obviously 

 betray its artificiality. And their confidence was easily 

 secured ; they succumbed as readily to the rude, imper- 

 fect efforts of my own unskilful fingers as to the most 



