254 THE DRY-FLY MAN'S HANDBOOK 



autopsy spread over more than a quarter of a century 

 has failed to produce any of these Insects in the autop- 

 sies made. At the same time 

 Csenis. it may well be possible that at 



times, under different condi- 

 tions and in other streams, it is a favourite kind of 

 food for the trout. In the new set of patterns, No. 20, 

 the male spinner of the iron-blue, is the best imitation, 

 but it is far larger than the natural insect. 



Periodically this insect is referred to in the sport- 

 ing press as the little white curse, and we are 

 solemnly assured that when the clouds of this fly 

 are in the air they settle on the fisherman and 

 sting or bite him. In " Dry-Fly Entomology " I 

 have tried to answer all these points in the follow- 

 ing paragraph : — 



"To answer these points: Firstly, the flies that 

 fishermen call curses are Diptera, but this is one of 

 the Ephemeridae. Secondly, in many hundreds of 

 autopsies I have never found a single Csenis in a 

 trout or grayling. Thirdly, Csenis has no sting and 

 the mouth organs are so aborted that it is incapable 

 of biting. The tiny insects usually appear in count- 

 less numbers on hot calm evenings when the fish 

 are likely to be rising freely at various other flies 

 on the water ; they settle down on the clothes, the 

 hands, face or any other part of the fisherman only 

 because they require some firm object to stand 

 upon while casting their subimago skin and emerg- 

 ing as the imago or perfect insect." 



