THE DRY FLY. 137 



describe, but we all feel it, deep down in our 

 beings. We may belong to the north, and would 

 not belong elsewhere if we could; but when May 

 and June come we are caught and swept by a 

 longing for those gracious and lovely valleys, 

 which is not satisfied till we go there. 



In these happy valleys each season has a 

 charm of its own. If you are so lucky as to be 

 there in early April you have the added, attrac- 

 tion that spring and summer are in front of 

 you, five solid months of fishing. What matter 

 if there be no rise? There will come days in 

 May when the olives will sail down in fleets. 

 What matter that you know that your total days 

 in the year will be few ? Never mind, you will 

 have some : the glories of the summer are still 

 to come, and you feel the same deep inflowing 

 happiness which you experience when you are 

 on the river early on a June morning and know 

 that the whole long day is before you. 



The valley early in April is quite different 

 from its aspect in June. The willows are only 

 just green, the oak and the poplar still bare. 

 The dead rushes and sedges, washed by the 

 winter rains, give the landscape a peculiar 

 bleached look, and the water by contrast looks 

 dark and rather forbidding. Not many flowers 

 are out, but the kingcup is everywhere : in waste 

 places where last year's reeds lie thick and 

 yellow it glows beneath them like flame beneath 

 firewood. The grass too in the water-meadows 

 is the dark glossy grass of early spring, unlike 



