HOOKS. 5 
hook, is by no means new. Mr. H. S. Hall, whose charming 
contributions to these pages will be read with interest by all 
dry fly-fishers, was my immediate predecessor and pioneer on 
the somewhat thorny, though by no means untrodden, track ; 
and long before him, both during the present century and still 
earlier, a perception of the advantages to be attained by a 
system of attaching the hook direct to the line has been present 
to the minds of several writers on angling and hook manu- 
facturers, amongst whom Messrs. Warner, of Redditch, are 
entitled to most honourable mention. But what I mean by 
saying that the perfecting of the idea yet remained to be 
accomplished is, that, however ingenious or admirable in them- 
selves, these attempts and essays have failed in the one all- 
important respect of actually solving the problem ; of solving 
it, that is, by producing such a system of hook-eyes and 
attachments as would obviate the various inherent difficulties 
and objections, and bring the invention into general practical 
use amongst anglers. 
Success—as I think it is now being perceived—depended, in 
fact, quite as much on the perfect simplicity and strength of 
the knot by which the attachment is to be made as on the 
metal eye or loop itself. 
This ‘loop’ might, theoretically, be either turned upwards 
or downwards, or ‘needle-eyed ’—that is, drilled perpendicu- 
larly through the end of the hook-shank like the eye of a 
needle ; and in the first issue of these volumes each system 
was fully discussed, with the arguments vo and con. At pre- 
sent, however, it would appear—so far, at least, as the tackle 
makers may be supposed to feel the pulse of the angling and 
fly-fishing world—that the arguments adduced in the earlier 
issues of this book, or other causes, have so far influenced pub- 
lic opinion in the matter that—firstly—eyed hooks are rapidly 
coming into more general use, primarily amongst trout-fishers ; 
and—secondly—that only my own patterns of hooks with the eyes 
turned down enjoy any considerable or increasing popularity. 
I shall therefore, in the present revised edition, omit as far as 
