172 FLY FISHING FOR TEOUT. 



give us something of value, for in addition to 

 the materials discussed in the last chapter, it 

 has a plate of hooks showing their sizes. I 

 think the plate can be accepted as accurate : 

 those in the Treatise are either very good, like 

 the excellent one of tools for hook making, or 

 very bad, like that of the rod : and I believe this 

 is one of the good ones. The great thing it 

 proves is that hooks were not large. They vary 

 from 2 or 3 to 15 on the modern scale, and more- 

 over are notably short in the shank. That 

 argues a small fly. That is as far as we can go. 

 But it can be added that the fact that flies were 

 copied from nature, and the general excellence 

 of the materials, make it probable that the 

 construction of the trout fly did not lag behind. 



Markham in 1614 went a little further. He 

 cannot, he says, describe the shapes and pro- 

 portions of flies without painting : therefore 

 you are to take live flies, and copy their shape 

 and colour as closely as you can. That again 

 looks like well-made flies, for both shape and 

 colour are to be copied. Then in 1620, in 

 Lawson's notes to the Secrets of Angling, 

 occurs the first picture of an artificial : but that 

 does not help. It resembles nothing so much as 

 a housefly on a hook. I cannot believe that that 

 admirable angler used anything so inartistic. 



So we really know very little till we reach 

 Barker, the first to describe how to tie a trout 

 fly. Cut off your wing material, he says, and 

 tie the feather on the top of the hook, pointing 



