alterations too will be found. Particular attention has been bestowed on the Double Palmers, as these are so important a feature in the work, and so deservedly celebrated. There are anglers on the Dove who never use any other fly on their lash but two of these Palmers, Nos. 45. and 46. This, however, is going to an extreme, and savours of prejudice, or laziness, rather than of sportsmanlike skill and industry. Such anglers seldom make their own flies; and unless this accomplishment has been attained, half the pleasure of fly-fishing has not been tasted.

As this book is intended to encourage and assist the observation and ingenuity of the young angler, the instructions have been in places simplified, as in the section showing "How to make a Fly:" for to encumber the process with "invisible knots," and other niceties, seemed too discouraging to the beginner; and he will find that newly made flies will not come to pieces (though finished with a very simple knot) before the gut is frayed near the head of the fly. This

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danger, more imminent, has been provided against, by advising to make all large flies on loops, and so guard the weakest point. The fear of "cracking" off a fly is thus lessened materially, and the pleasure of the beginner much enhanced.

The prospects of the fly-fisher are materially brightened by the recent investigations of scientific men, on the subject of breeding fish artificially. The protection of the spawn, and of the young fish, appears so simple a means of multiplying our best fish, that we may hope to see many a troutless stream replenished, and fresh Subscription Waters started, under the most hopeful auspices. The fear of thinning the fish will not haunt the proprietor of a good stream so painfully as heretofore, and the graceful art of fly-fishing will gain fresh votaries. That any one who has once conceived a taste for it, should transfer his affections to other sports, need not be apprehended. For, to use the words of Mr. Bainbridge, to whom fly-fishing is so deeply indebted, "It is a fact worthy of notice, that although many persons have quitted other sports for

the amusement of fly-fishing, yet memory does not furnish a single instance of a flyfisher deserting his occupation, and transferring his preference to any other of the list of rural sports."

PISCATOR.

Thames Side, February, 1856.

PREFACE

то

THE FIRST EDITION.

THE Author of this little work entreats that it may be considered and judged of as the labour, or rather the amusement, of an amateur; whose chief object has been to facilitate to the tyro in the art, the making and choice of artificial flies, on a plan of elucidation derived from personal experience.

Having himself sorely felt the inadequacy of mere verbal instructions to enable him to imitate the natural fly correctly, or even approximately, and the little utility of graphical illustrations unaccompanied by the principle requisite-colour, he has been induced to paint both the natural and artificial fly from nature, to etch them with his own hand, and to colour, or super