98 FLY FISHING FOE TROUT. 



Stoddart, Colquhoun and Scrope led me to that 

 land of enchantment whose magic does not fade 

 as I grow older. I have never fished the Tweed 

 and do not know it, but I hardly feel I need to, 

 so clearly is it pictured in their writings. They 

 and their fellows threw a glamour round it, and 

 made it to the fisherman what Leicestershire is 

 to the fox-hunter or Hampshire to the dry fly 

 man. 



This age of literary achievement was barren 

 of technical advance. It was as though pro- 

 gress proceeded by alternate paths. The 

 eighteenth century saw the perfecting of 

 implements : when this was done, the way was 

 clear for the movement of the nineteenth, which 

 was in the mind of man. When both had taken 

 place, when mental and technical equipment 

 were equal, then some great movement was sure 

 to come. And come it did. During the period 

 under review Stewart was fishing and thinking, 

 and it was not long before he took the world 

 into his confidence. 



