HOOKS. 29 
many flies or hooks as are required for a day’s fishing could be 
carried, I might almost say, in the waistcoat pocket. 
Published testimonies to the success of the eyed-hook 
principle generally are too numerous to attempt even to give a 
summary of them all here. Mr. H.S. Hall, one of our very 
best clear stream fly-fishers, who has lately written an ably- 
practical essay.on the ‘ Dry Fly,’ has, it is well known, given his 
entire adhesion to eyed hooks, with which, indeed, his name 
has been long identified. Mr. Frederic M. Halford, author of 
the lately published charming monograph on ‘Floating Flies 
and how to dress them,’ and also of a subsequent exhaustive 
treatise on ‘Dry Fly-fishing,’ is another apostle of the new 
culte. His first chapter is devoted to eyed hooks, and the 
opening sentence runs thus: 
‘ But before many years are passed the old-fashioned fly, dressed on a hook 
attached to a length of gut, will be practically obsolete, the advantages of the 
eyed hook being so manifest that even the most conservative adherents of the 
old school must, in time, be imbued with this most salutary reform.’ 
After enumerating several of the more obvious advantages 
already noticed, Mr. Halford continues : 
‘Flies dressed on eyed hooks float better and with less drying than those 
constructed on the old system. . . . Another and, in my opinion, paramount 
benefit is, that at the very earliest symptom of weakness at the point of juncture 
of the head of the fly and gut (the point at which the maximum wear and tear 
takes place) it is only necessary in the case of the eyed fly to break it off and 
tie on afresh, sacrificing at most a couple of inches of the fine end of the cast ; 
while in the case of the hook on gut, the fly has become absolutely useless and 
beyond repair. It must also be remembered that with eyed hooks the angler 
can use gut as coarse or as fine as he may fancy for the particular day, while 
with flies on gut he would require to have each pattern dressed on two or three 
different thicknesses.’ 
Of course books on Fishing (I do not refer to catch-penny 
productions, or to trade circulars) do not appear every day, or 
every year, and those I have quoted from are, so far as I know, 
the most recent, and therefore authoritative, on subjects the 
importance of which has only lately begun to be recognised. 
T dismiss this part of my subject with one or two brief 
