136 THE WAY OF A TROUT WITH A FLY 



adequate quantity — at any rate with their present re- 

 sources — and that they are thus driven to fall back upon 

 dyed and faked substitutes; but even so there is little 

 excuse for the wretchedly poor material which many houses 

 are content to foist upon their customers. The only way 

 to account for it is the excuse offered by Dr. Johnson for 

 a gross blunder in his dictionary: " Sheer ignorance, 

 madam, sheer ignorance." Anyone who, knowing any- 

 thing about hackles, goes over the stock picked on the 

 markets for the wholesale houses, may well be astonished 

 to see the trash that they are content to buy at a penny a 

 neck or less — badly selected and badly picked, wretched 

 in quality, shape, colour, and condition, and actually 

 omitting the bulk of the best and most valuable small 

 hackles in the neck. Honestly, it would pay them better 

 to exercise a liberal right of rejection, and to pay four or 

 six times as much for carefully, competently chosen, and 

 adequately picked stuff. Again and again, when I have 

 lit upon a packet containing the pickings of a beautiful 

 blue dun cock I have found that there is scarcely a feather 

 fit to tie a fly as small as No. i, and that what there are 

 are twisted in plucking and often foul with blood. Reds 

 are picked in bulk in the same way, and with a reckless 

 disregard of size, under-colour, texture, brightness, quality. 

 And so with gingers and the rest. Occasionally I have 

 dropped on to an excellent honey-dun hen unplucked 

 because the poulterer's man did not know enough to see 

 it was worth while. 



The same ignorance which pervades the ranks of the 

 poulterer's men is to be found putting in its deadly work 

 among the professional fly dressers. The mechanical part 

 of their art may be, and often is, excellently done, but if 

 the dresser does not know what effects he is aiming at, 

 how is he to know how to get them, or how important it 

 is to have the material right and high in quality ? There 



