EX MORTUA MANU 87 



take hold. It is not suggested that he might not also 

 evolve the floating fly for use on special occasions, but 

 I venture to think it would take a place quite secondary 

 to the nymph, if once the initial difficulty of imitating the 

 nymph were surmounted. He would ascertain that during 

 the period of preparation for the rise these nymphs w r ere 

 floating at large in considerable numbers, and were legiti- 

 mate subjects for imitation. Not so the larval or pupal 

 stages of the Phryganidae and the Perlidae, which, hiding 

 in their cases or lurking under stones, do not, at any stage 

 short of the perfect insect, lend themselves to imitation 

 for the purposes of the artificial fly. The larvae of the 

 diptera on which the trout feed are in general too infrequent 

 in streams or (like the perfect insects) too small to lend 

 themselves to the purposes of the fly fisherman. Assuming, 

 therefore, that the modern angler determined to discard 

 these types of fly, which, either by their dragging motion 

 or by the brilliancy or challenge of their appearance, excited 

 the curiosity or tyranny or pugnacity of the trout, he would 

 find himself practically confined to the floating fly and the 

 larvae or nymphs of the Ephemeridae. 



He could not, of course, deny that artificial flies, dressed 

 by the lights hitherto vouchsafed to us, have caught trout 

 in the past, or that they will continue to do so in the 

 future. He would probably recognize that on some, 

 perhaps on many, waters the appeal to curiosity, tyranny, 

 or rapacity which they present affords a better chance 

 than the appeal to appetite which the floating fly and the 

 larval or nymphal imitation presents, and that some waters 

 are unsuited to the floating fly. But I think he would 

 have to admit that for an appeal resting upon appetite 

 alone the floating dry fly, the flush with the surface tumbled 

 floating fly, the dipping egg-layer, and the larval or nymphal 

 imitations are the only strictly legitimate lures, and that 



