THE SENSE OF COLOUR 27 



many shades of green, it seems unlikely that they are 

 insensitive to green, but there are practically no blues in 

 the trout's habitat unless you count the blue of the sky 

 seen through the circle of vision above him. And it 

 would not surprise me if it were proved that trout are 

 comparatively insensitive to blues. 



It may be that Sir Herbert Maxwell's famous red and 

 blue May flies were, in fact, the one the colour of supreme 

 attraction, the other a neutral grey. 



On no point is there great divergence of opinion among 

 anglers than on this of the power of the trout to distinguish 

 colour; but it is only possible to reason from one's own 

 experience, and to appeal to that of others. For the moment 

 we are dealing with the colours suggesting current daily 

 food, and setting aside the colours of lures which excite 

 tyranny, rapacity, or curiosity. These latter are usually 

 bright and stimulating, and they are rather beside the 

 point for our argument. The colours of the nymphs, duns, 

 and other insects which form the daily menu are in general 

 sober, and if trout were incapable of making fairly fine 

 distinctions of colour, it is hard to account for those 

 frequent occasions when fly after fly is tried, seemingly 

 like enough to the fly on the water, in vain, and finally 

 a pattern is found which kills fish after fish. Again, on 

 wet-fly waters, where the angler is laying a team of flies 

 across the stream, one fly out of the three or four will be 

 persistently selected by the trout, and if two or more 

 anglers are using the same pattern on diverse casts they 

 all find the same pattern selected. My own belief, for what 

 it is worth, is that where the supply of food is moderate or 

 small and the fish is hungry, his taste is apt to be far 

 more catholic than on those occasions when there is a 

 strong hatch of one or more varieties, one of which appeals 

 most strongly to the trout. There must have been days 



