FLY-FISHING BY NIGHTLIGHT. 187 
angling. The pole or handle of the landing-net, the 
indispensable companion of the rod, was from six to 
seven feet in length, and spiked at the lower end. 
The hoop, ovate or circular, but always of wood, 
measured about twenty inches in its greatest dia- 
meter. The net part of the article, I may here ob- 
serve, has the disagreeable property of becoming 
rotten without the leave or knowledge of the owner. 
Large trout sometimes took advantage of this idio- 
pathic infirmity of hemp, and at the critical moment 
of life or death, shot through it as if so much gossa- 
mer. The accident is about as awkward as any 
incidental to angling. The absence of a recognised 
standard-gauge amongst hook-makers, some using 
numerical, others alphabetical symbols, renders preci- 
sion in the description of the flies employed some- 
what difficult. To state that they were of the usual 
lake-fly size would, at least to some anglers, convey 
an erroneous impression of their magnitude. The 
fisher of Welsh lakes would assume probably that 
river-flies were meant. Not a few of the anglers 
even of the great Scottish lakes would be likely to 
commit a similar mistake. But more extraordinary 
still, I have seen a certain class of sedate, middle- 
aged votaries of the “gentle craft,” starting on an 
excursion to the Irish lakes, with their fiy-books 
(fly-dictionaries would be a more appropriate name), 
stuffed with these small river-flies for presentation to 
