EVOLUTION OF THE TROUT FLY. 153 



fly, and mole's fur body. So we get the fly of 

 to-day. 



The dressing of Olive Duns as floating flies 

 is different. The fur body absorbs too much 

 water and the beautiful quill body we now use 

 has taken its place. The hackle is usually a 

 dyed olive one, though I doubt if it is any 

 improvement on the old undyed dun hackle; 

 and the wing is invariably starling, as Chetham 

 discovered two hundred and forty years ago. 



Yellow Dun. 



The Dun Cut of the Treatise : 'the Dun Cut, 

 the body of black wool and a yellow list after 

 either side, the wings of the buzzard bound on 

 with barkyd (i.e. dyed) hemp.* 



The curious name of Dun Cut lasted till last 

 century as a synonym for the Yellow Dun. It 

 is common in the eighteenth, and Sir Humphry 

 Davy uses it still later, and even in 1849 John 

 Beever ('Arundo') gives it in Practical Fly- 

 Fishing. I know nothing of its origin. 

 Curiously enough it is not given by Mascall, 

 who called it the Sad Yellow Fly, and from him 

 the name got into Walton, who pirated from 

 Mascall, and from Walton into the numberless 

 writers who pirated from him, till finally 

 Bowlker knocked it out of fishing books in the 

 middle of the eighteenth century. By then it 

 was corrupted to Sandy Yellow Fly. But though 

 the Sad or Sandy Yellow Fly has disappeared, 

 the fly as the Yellow Dun or Dun Cut has had a 



