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A beautiful and highly scientific branch of fly-fishing which 
is yearly coming more into favour, is fishing with the fly dry, 
floating passively down stream over a rising fish, instead of 
submerged and guided hither and thither across the current in 
the fashion of our forefathers—a method of old-world angling 
sometimes contemptuously described by votaries of the newer 
art as the ‘ chuck-and-chance-it’ style. 
Dry-fly fishing aptly illustrates a remark made prefatory to 
these pages as to the increase of specialism in matters pisca- 
torial. Fly-fishing is in itself, of course, a ‘speciality ’—though 
a most important one—amongst the numerous branches of the 
gentle art which are comprised in the generic term ‘angling ;’ 
but fly-fishing with the dry fly is the ‘specialism of a speciality.’ 
I esteem myself most fortunate, therefore, in being able to 
delegate the expounding of its mysteries to two such authorities, 
both as professors and practitioners, as my friends Mr. H. S. 
‘Hall and Mr. Frederic M. Halford. Mr. Halford’s beautiful 
and exhaustive treatises on the subject are doubtless already 
familiar to many of my readers. 
