CHAPTER VI. 



FROM COTTON TO STEWART. 



The quiet pastime of their choice 



On Beauly rocks, in Derwent glades, 

 Still seems to move to Walton's voice, 



Singing of dace and dairymaids : 

 His water meadows still are wet. 



His brawling trout streams leap and glance. 

 And on their sunlit ripples yet 



The flies of his disciples dance. 



Collected Verses. 

 Alfred Cochrane. 1903. 



I HE one hundred and eighty years 

 which separate Stewart from 

 Cotton are years of advance 

 which, though great, proceeded 

 by hardly perceptible stages. At 

 the beginning men fished with no 

 reel, twisted hair lines, long rods, and a single 

 fly. At the end they used short rods, some- 

 times of split cane, reels, silk lines, and drawn 

 gut, and, except those bold adventurers who 

 used the dry fly or on very shy waters, two or 

 three flies. These great changes were evolved 

 so slowly that the period cannot be divided 



