DOWN THE BECK 41 



powers of the fishing-tackle maker, and fill their 

 fly-books with his gorgeously-coloured creations ; 

 but with the stone -flies, May -flies, and other 

 simple flies previously enumerated, most real 

 anglers are contented. 



The greatest nuisance to the fisherman on the 

 banks of the Beck are the hovering swarms of 

 flies and gnats. Nature's profusion is almost 

 inexhaustible in this division of her kingdom. In 

 hot, sunny weather, they persecute the angler till 

 he well-nigh gives up his sport, and betakes him- 

 self to moralize how his situation, lonely though it 

 be, is no inapt type of a man's spiritual loneliness 

 in the midst of that crowd of his fellows called 

 Society, 



" Where each man walks with his head in a clond of poison- 

 ous flies." 



Yes, here is the whole winged legion avenging, as 

 it were, the slight the angler puts upon them by 

 his grotesque imitations, in number and description 

 more fell than Walton ever imagined in the mar- 

 vellous flies he directs his disciples to dub — " the 

 Prime Dun, Huzzard, Death Drake, Yellow Miller, 

 Light Blue, Blue Herl," and all the rest ! It would 

 require a piscatorial entomologist to identify them ; 

 and when they buzz around their victims, how well 

 can these enter into Dante's grim fancy of the 



