JULY 179 



myself, a profound scepticism delivers from the anguish 

 of hesitancy and misgiving, and enables them to attach 

 to the line a crimson and gold Manchester Swell with 

 exactly the same degree of confidence as they would 

 put up a sable and silver Mar Lodge or a polychrome 

 Popham. Indeed, if there be any guiding principle in 

 this matter — if salmon are gifted with the powers of 

 discrimination with which some people credit them — 

 surely the aim of the angler should be to present them 

 with something as different as possible from the lures 

 with which they may have become familiar. Certainly 

 upon this occasion I could reckon upon no proved par- 

 tiality on the part of the salmon I hoped to catch for 

 the particular pattern which, coming first to hand, was 

 chosen for the task, inasmuch as the like of it had never 

 been seen upon the Rauma before. It was a purely 

 local fly from the Cumberland Eden, reckoned there as 

 ' great medicine,' and known as the Bulldog — though the 

 reason is not exactly on the surface why a creature with 

 a bright blue body, a silver tail, red hindlegs, and black 

 and yellow wings, should bear that title. The only one 

 that suggests itself is that it resembles a bulldog quite 

 as closely as it does any known species in the insect 

 world. What, after all, is there in a name ? Those who 

 have enacted the part of lovers tell me that at times their 

 feeling toward the object of their flame is so intense that 

 it can only find expression in the ejaculation ' Well, you 

 are a duck ! ' — an assertion which, taken literally, cannot 

 be considered complimentary either to the figure, features, 

 or mental attributes of any nymph. 



By the time the Bulldog was ready for business it 

 was half-past five ; yet, just as Wellington defeated 40,000 



