18 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



that, whether the hook be blued or brown, it does not deter 

 trout from frequently seeking to make a meal of the arti- 

 ficial fly. The trout, therefore, must either fail to see the 

 hook, or, seeing it, must ignore it. If he sees it and realizes 

 that it is an unnatural appendage to the artificial fly, he 

 could hardly ignore it. He must therefore either take it for a 

 natural appendage, or for some casual, but quite irrelevant, 

 attachment, or be so obsessed by his intentness on his 

 food as to see only what he wants to see — namely, that 

 combination of colour which seems to him to correspond 

 with the natural insect in favour for the moment. It is 

 impossible to say that he does not take the hook for some 

 casual attachment, for all sorts of odd things float down 

 the water with the natural fly. Yet he will not as a rule 

 take a fly to which a weed attaches. The trout are familiar 

 with those nasty little thin leeches which attack their own 

 heads and bodies. Whether these ever attack floating flies 

 I could not say, but I never saw or heard of their doing 

 so. The balance of probability, I think, leans to the 

 theory that the trout is so obsessed by the pressure of 

 appetite that he only sees what he wants to see — his 

 supposed insect prey — and ignores the hook as an irrelevant 

 detail,* all of which goes to prove that the wily trout of 

 the poets and journalists is — may Providence be devoutly 

 thanked for it — really rather a stupid person. 



IV 



THE SENSE OF POSITION 



If it be true, as has been suggested, that the trout is so 

 obsessed by the pressure of appetite that he is when feeding 

 lost to the sense of all things connected with his food except 



* This is in keeping with his being satisfied if his colour sense be 

 satisfied and with his lack of a clear sense of form. 



