DEESIDE FOTTINGS. 227 
cording to the new philosophy the subject has passed 
the metaphysical method of investigation, and taken 
rank amongst the proved items of M. Comte’s Posi- 
tivism. By the advocates of this doctrine we are as- 
sured that salmon would commit suicide by inanition 
sooner than they would rise to a fly that was not born 
and bred on the banks of their own river. It must be 
of the true local sui generis description to suit the tastes 
and habits of these scrupulous Brahmins of the stream. 
I have often in my angling peregrinations sought to 
trace the origin of the favourite lures of most rivers, 
but cannot add that I have been successful. When 
I inquired who the daring Prometheus was that stole 
fire from heaven and animated these monsters into 
an ephemeral popularity, I was generally referred for 
their paternity to the priest, the parson, the doctor, 
the half-pay captain, and the Waterloo pensioner of 
the village, who had only two real legs and an eye 
and a half between them. The fact was the latter, 
poor fellow! had just been couched for cataract by 
the salmon doctor, who left half the membrane still 
floating in the aqueous chamber of the one eye he 
had, and thus sadly reduced his patient’s optical re- 
sources as a “judge of colours.” Sometimes I found 
it was the village barber, cobbler, but above all a 
certain mysterious tinker, who “like a shadow came 
and so departed,” that bequeathed to posterity’ the 
invaluable secret of some of these infallible lures. 
