4 SALMON AND TROUT. 
HOOKS. 
Fish-hooks, as they have come down to us from antiquity, 
and are represented in bone or bronze in our museums and 
collections, appear to have been steadily improving from 
century to century, until in our own day the art of hook- 
manufacture, fer se, may be considered to have reached its 
ultimate ‘ possibilities.’ 
Apart, however, from mere excellence of material and 
workmanship, the time is now apparently ripe for a sweeping 
change—so far, at least, as regards hooks used in fresh-water 
fishing—a change not of detail but of principle : the principle 
that is, of constructing the hook with a metal eye or loop, at the 
end of the shank by which the line is attached (knotted on) direct 
to the hook itself, instead of by the old-fashioned process of gut 
lappings or gut loops. Consequently hook-making may be re- 
garded to this extent as at present in a transition state ; and 
the angling world—the trout angler especially—is equally 
passing through a sort of interregnum between the old system 
and the new. 
The realisation and completion of the eyed-hook principle 
was sure to come sooner or later, for an age which is ‘nothing 
if not mechanical’ could not but in the end rebel against the 
crude and unscientific method of procedure bequeathed to 
us by our ancestors, and adopted with scarcely a protest by 
generation after generation of succeeding anglers. The eyed- 
hook system was, in fact, the one great perfectionment in fly- 
fishing that yet remained—in spite of previous incomplete or 
partially successful attempts — practically unaccomplished ; 
and recognising the magnitude of the task, as well as the im- 
portance of its achievement, if achieved, I have for some years 
past thrown all my energies into the attempt, with results so far 
eminently encouraging. 
The idea itself, of some sort of plan of attachment direct to 
the line by means of metal eyes or loops forming part of the 
