FROM THE FISHES' POINT OF VIEW. 141 



every detail of herbage and foliage in the foreground 

 and an elaborate middle distance are shown, or the 

 broad, liberal rendering of the artist giving his inter- 

 pretation and impression in simple masses of form and 

 colour, repressing all except essentials ? So with the 

 fly-dresser the simple glassy hackle glittering in the 

 sunshine and lightly impinging on the surface of the 

 water when viewed from below gives a far more 

 realistic impression than a heavy winged fly struggling 

 to float with the aid of oil, where the hackled variety 

 rides easily and buoyantly. 



The effect of oiling a dry fly is to alter its refractive 

 index, darken and sodden it to a remarkable extent so 

 that it does not present a thousand little points to 

 catch the light as it did before the application of oil, 

 and this is another excellent reason why a hackle fly 

 frequently scores when a winged imitation, oiled, fails. 



There are, of course, great limitations imposed by 

 the materials, and also the conditions of using them. 

 To begin with, the bodies of all flies are tubular and 

 allow a certain amount of light to pass through them, 

 whereas the base of all artificial flies is of necessity a 

 steel bar, excepting in the case of flies with detached 

 or semi-detached bodies. Viewed from above, the 

 quill body is as near Nature as possible, but from 

 below it is almost black, unless there is light reflected 

 from below, and although a rough, thick woolly body 

 is an abomination, the fact cannot be overlooked that 

 a coloured light comes through the edges of the wool 

 which suggests a transparence entirely absent in the 



