HOOKS. 19 



speaking, can be imported into a hook. And yet they are 

 taken, facsimile, from a hook-maker's catalogue (I forbear to 

 give the name), as illustrations, it is to be presumed, of what 

 in his opinion hooks ought to be ! If one of these abortions, 

 say No. 4 or 5 ' needle point,' so called, were attached to gut 

 and the point pulled in the ordinary way against a piece of 

 cork — which represents fairly well the inside of a fish's mouth 

 — I doubt very much if it could by any possibility be made 

 to penetrate; the hook-point would, in fact, strike the fish's 

 mouth vertically instead of horizontally. 



If it should appear that I am attaching undue importance 

 to minute details, let it be borne in mind that ' the whole art 

 and paraphernalia of angling have for their objects, first, to 

 hook fish, and, secondly, to keep them hooked.' The differ- 

 ence in the penetrating powers alone of different bends of 

 hooks is something enormous ; between the extremes of good- 

 ness and badness (I am not speaking now of 'monstrosities ') 

 it amounts to certainly not less than a hundred per cent. 



TROUT HOOKS. 



Eyed Hooks for trout flies, and the general idea of attaching 

 them to the end of the casting line direct, are not, as already 

 pointed out, in any correct sense of the term novelties, eyed 

 hooks having been alluded to as early as Hawker's edition of 

 ' Walton's Angler,' temp. 1760. No great attention, however, 

 appears to have been paid to the subject of Eyed Trout-hooks 

 until comparatively recent times, when the question — confined, 

 at the particular period to which I am referring, to turn-up 

 eyes — was ventilated at considerable length in the columns of 

 the Field and the Fishing Gazette by Mr. Hall. This was 

 followed in the latter journal by a lively controversy on 'needle- 

 eyed ' hooks, initiated by myself ; and finally I invented, and 

 published, the turn-down eyed hook, of which so much has 

 since been written, for and against, by partisans of the old 

 and the new schools. 



