96 FLY FISHING FOE TEOUT. 



modern upright rings than are those which 

 superseded them, which were rings so lashed 

 on as to lie flat when the rod was not in use, 

 a great convenience for packing, but not nearly 

 so free running as the upright or snake rings 

 which have taken their place. 



These details are dull, I know, but it is 

 necessary to understand them in order to appre- 

 ciate the technical advance which fly fishing 

 made during the eighteenth century. At its 

 beginning, men fished much as they did in the 

 fifteenth : at its close, everything that we have 

 now was in use except the American split cane 

 rod. Eeels, lines, gut, flies, net, basket : all 

 were there. 



In the first half of the nineteenth century, 

 fishing, which had fallen somewhat into 

 literary eclipse, burst suddenly into light 

 again. Famous men once more wrote about 

 it, most of the world practised it, and those 

 who did not read about it. This was due in 

 great measure to the immense popularity of 

 everything Scotch which the Waverley novels 

 induced, and under this influence a band of 

 writers arose who were read not only on their 

 own merits, which in any case would have 

 brought them to the fore, but also because they 

 described a newly-discovered country. Stoddart 

 and Colquhoun, Scrope and Professor John 

 Wilson as well as lesser lights, were writing 

 copiously, and their output shows that the 

 world's power of absorbing fishing literature 



