96 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER 



his conclusion while denying the soundness of his minor 

 premise. We are not, as he declares, compelled to 

 suppose that the trout takes the artificial for a real fly ; 

 he may take it for a beetle, for a corixa, for a small 

 crustacean, for one of the many things 

 inhabiting the water ; he may, as has 

 already been suggested, take it merely 

 because it seems a thing of life and 

 therefore edible. Even admitting the 

 truth of Stewart's assumption — an 

 assumption shared by so many of us — 

 that the artifice is taken for a fly, does the trout per- 

 ceive a dismaying breach of nature's order in the 

 spectacle it presents as it lightly and easily surmounts 

 a stream against which he himself maintains his posi- 

 tion with difficulty? I do not think so. He may or 

 may not take the lure. If he does not, it is because 

 he sees that it is not a natural object, or because, while 

 unsuspectingly assuming its reality, it is not to his taste 

 or he has no desire for food. It is not because he 

 has carefully pondered the phenomenon — he has 

 never heard the word and knows nothing of the thing 

 it signifies — and arrived at the reasoned conclusion 

 that, since the object of his scrutiny is accomplishing a 

 feat beyond the capacity of any earthly insect, it must 



