204 A SCOTTISH FLY-FISHER 



Walton to be currently reported "touched," because 

 he had been seen apparently endeavouring to raise 

 imagined trout among the daisies on his washing-green. 

 Should the novice lack self-confidence, he may pro- 

 cure the assistance of a friend on whose ability to teach 

 him he feels he can depend ; or if, with small capacity 

 for learning, he owns a superfluity of wealth, he may 

 undergo a course of professional instruction. He need 

 not put his trust in books ; they are unreliable as princes. 

 The information he will find in them is confusingly di- 

 verse, and often hard of comprehension. What, for 

 example, will he make of the advice to turn his face up 

 or down the river when it lists the wind to blow in that 

 direction? With much of that information, too, we 

 might readily dispense. For instruction in the pro- 

 cesses necessarily involved in casting, the beginner may 

 have reason to be grateful, but elaborate directions con- 

 cerning the grasp of the rod and other details not 

 essential to success are of no very obvious utility. It 

 may profit the learner to be told that in essaying a cast 

 he must be careful to lift his line well into the air, and 

 that in its backward swing his rod must not be carried 

 much beyond the vertical, but in an erudite discourse 

 on style he will discover little that is worth the knowing. 

 In the casting of the fly, style is as varied as in the 



