HOOKS. 29 



many flies or hooks as are required for a day's fishing could be 

 carried, I might almost say, in the waistcoat pocket. 



Published testimonies to the success of the eyed-hook 

 principle generally are too numerous to attempt even to give a 

 summary of them all here. Mr. H. S. Hall, one of our very 

 best clear stream fly-fishers, who has lately written an ably- 

 practical essay on the ' Dry Fly,' has, it is well known, given his 

 entire adhesion to eyed hooks, with which, indeed, his name 

 has been long identified. Mr. Frederic M. Halford, author of 

 the lately published charming monograph on ' Floating Flies 

 and how to dress them,' and also of a subsequent exhaustive 

 treatise on ' Dry Fly-fishing,' is another apostle of the new 

 culte. His first chapter is devoted to eyed hooks, and the 

 opening sentence runs thus : 



' But before many years are passed the old-fashioned fly, dressed on a hook 

 attached to a length of gut, will be practically obsolete, the advantages of the 

 eyed hook being so manifest that even the most conservative adherents of the 

 old school must, in time, be imbued with this most salutary reform." 



After enumerating several of the more obvious advantages 

 already noticed, Mr. Halford continues : 



' Flies dressed on eyed hooks float better and with less drying than those 

 constructed on the old system. . . . Another and, in my opinion, paramount 

 benefit is, that at the very earliest symptom of weakness at the point of juncture 

 of the head of the fly and gut (the point at which the maximum wear and tear 

 takes place) it is only necessary in the case of the eyed fly to break it off and 

 tie on afresh, sacrificing at most a couple of inches of the fine end of the cast ; 

 while in the case of the hook on gut, the fly has become absolutely useless and 

 beyond repair. It must also be remembered that with eyed hooks the angler 

 can use gut as coarse or as fine as he may fancy for the particular day, while 

 with flies on gut he would require to have each pattern dressed on two or three 

 different thicknesses.' 



Of course books on Fishing (I do not refer to catch-penny 

 productions, or to trade circulars) do not appear every day, or 

 every year, and those I have quoted from are, so far as I know, 

 the most recent, and therefore authoritative, on subjects the 

 importance of which has only lately begun to be recognised. 



T dismiss this part of my subject with one or two brief 



k 



