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A beautiful and highly scientific branch of fly-fishing which 

 is yearly coming more into favour, is fishing with the fly dry, 

 floating passively down stream over a rising fish, instead of 

 submerged and guided hither and thither across the current in 

 the fashion of our forefathers — a method of old-world angling 

 sometimes contemptuously described by votaries of the newer 

 art as the ' chuck-and-chance-it ' style. 



Dry-fly fishing aptly illustrates a remark made prefatory to 

 these pages as to the increase of specialism in matters pisca- 

 torial. Fly-fishing is in itself, of course, a ' speciality ' — though 

 a most important one— amongst the numerous branches of the 

 gentle art which are comprised in the generic term ' angling ; ' 

 but fly-fishing with the dry fly is the ' specialism of a speciality.' 

 I esteem myself most fortunate, therefore, in being able to 

 delegate the expounding of its mysteries to two such authorities, 

 both as professors and practitioners, as my friends Mr. H. S. 

 Hall and Mr. Frederic M. Halford. Mr. Halford's beautiful 

 and exhaustive treatises on the subject are doubtless already 

 familiar to many of my readers. 



