x FOREWORD 



without progress commensurate with the amount of 

 labour and energy expended, and with as many divergencies 

 to right and left and as much slipping back and floundering 

 in morasses of error. That the subject is so eternally 

 interesting is my only excuse for the collection of the 

 speculations contained in the ensuing pages. That they 

 advance the sum of human knowledge on the subjects with 

 which they deal is too much to hope. 



For more years than I care to look back upon it has 

 been my ambition to write a work upon trout-fly dressing, 

 and it was my desire that it should exceed in scope all 

 previous books on the art, and should examine and elucidate 

 the methods of all the schools of dressing which this country 

 has produced. But I was determined not to rush hastily 

 into print before experience had sufficiently ripened my 

 knowledge to give me assurance that my deductions were 

 sound. I read omnivorously all that had been written on 

 the subject, and the more I read the more I became impressed 

 with the conviction that to make any advance upon the 

 past it would be necessary to discard much of the learning 

 of the past, to go back to the beginning, and to think out 

 and rediscover the principles upon which the practice of 

 the art should be based. 



It is a singular fact that among the many works which 

 have dealt with the subject of trout-fly dressing, it is 

 impossible to find one which deals at once practically and 

 comprehensively with the theory of the art. Cutclifle's 

 " Trout-fly Fishing on Rapid Streams," one of the most 

 intelligent works on fly fishing ever written, explores a 

 corner of the subject, but his patterns are mainly lures, and 

 when he comes to deal with patterns which are, or purport 

 to be, imitations, representations or suggestions of the 

 natural fly, he is manifestly out of his depth. 



It therefore became my plan to attempt a work on the 

 theory of the art of trout-fly dressing, with enough of the 

 practice to illustrate the various points made and the 



