156 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



presumably the quill feather. From then 

 onwards it has had innumerable clothings, for 

 it is mighty difficult to copy, but it is remark- 

 able that Ronalds, writing nearly a century 

 after Bowlker, gives what amounts to the same 

 dressing, and many followed him. It is not 

 easy to choose the best modern dressing, for 

 there are so many, that everyone has his 

 favourite, but I will take the one in Brook and 

 River T routing, of Edmonds and Lee, a good 

 modern book : wings, from tail feather of a 

 partridge, body orange silk dubbed with hare's 

 ear fur and ribbed with yellow silk ; hackle, the 

 greyish feather from a partridge back. 



I rather like Chetham's pattern, for black 

 sheep's wool is brown when held up to the light, 

 and if spun on red silk might give the reddish 

 brown of the body which is so hard to copy. 

 And then a partridge quill feather is good. The 

 perfect fly is still to come, but meantime it is 

 worth noticing how little it has changed in what 

 is nearly two centuries and a half. 



Iron Blue. 



Chetham is the first to mention this also, and 

 he made it 'of the Down of a Mouse for body and 

 head, dubt with sad Ash-coloured Silk, wings 

 of the sad coloured feather of a Shepstare quill.' 

 He calls it the Little Blue Dun, but it is clearly 

 the Iron Blue, for though he gives it as a 

 September fly and it makes its first appearance 

 much earlier, it lasts right into autumn and on 



