SIR HUMPHRY DAVY

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amusement through life in fishing. The distinguished author of "A View of the Evidence of Christianity" was very fond of animals, and, in his younger days, devoted to cock-fighting. Though, according to all accounts, a poor angler, the picture in the National Portrait Gallery, which is attributed to Sir William Beechey, depicts him with a rod in his hand. He was, however, wedded to his sport, and when the Bishop of Durham took him to task for delaying the completion of one of his most important works he answered: "My lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over."

Sir Humphry Davy, on the other hand, found time to fish in the intervals of his scientific labours, and was, it is said, a skilful fisherman. He is unfortunately, the only one of the four who has left us anything in writing about his sport.*

"The most important principle, perhaps in

* "Salmonia: or days of fly-fishing, in a series of conversations. With some account of the habits of fishes belonging to the genus Salmo." By an Angler. London: John Murray, 1828. The two first editions were anonymous. Sir Walter Scott reviewed the book in the Quarterly Review (1828), vol. xxxviii. p. 503.

life," wrote Sir Humphry Davy, "is to have a pursuit: a useful one if possible, and, at all events, an innocent one.

Though I do not expect like our archpatriarch Walton, to number ninety years and past, yet I hope as long as I can enjoy, in a vernal day, the warmth and heat of the sunshine, still to haunt the streams."

Of Sir Francis Chantrey's merits as a fisherman I know I know nothing; but when Malibran, the famous singer, paid him a visit in his studio and cried out with exaggerated enthusiasm, "How happy you must be in the midst of this your beautiful creation!" it is reported that the famous sculptor curtly answered, "I'd rather be a-fishing."

Trout-fishing, which demands the greatest manual skill though not perhaps the greatest knowledge of the ways and habits of fish, stands easily first before every other form of flyfishing. Indeed, one may be allowed to doubt whether salmon-fishing, however delightful and exciting, deserves to be included under that

name.

A salmon "fly" must be so-called from the analogy of a trout fly, not because it bears any resemblance to a fly. The rod and line of a skilful trout fisherman become, as it were, a part of himself and a prolongation of his arm, with which he can place his fly within a few inches of the desired spot. The lure is a copy of the natural food of the trout, and in dry-fly fishing at all events closely imitates an insect, though it may not be an insect classed in the order known to entomologists as Diptera or flies. The pleasures to be derived from the exercise of this art, when it has been painfully acquired; the excitement of deluding a shy trout into taking the fly; the delight of slipping the landing net under a big fish, and the joy excited by all the surroundings among which one fishes cannot, I am afraid, be imparted to those who have not felt them. An old keeper truly observed that when we endeavour to form the idea of paradise we always suppose a trout-stream going through it. And I suspect that if they were not afraid of expressing such pagan sentiments most fishermen would confess that they do likewise.

II

I HAVE often thought that an undeserved glamour surrounds the dry-fly fisherman. The art is well worth learning, and though it must of necessity be difficult to attain perfection, it is not hard to acquire tolerable skill with a dry-fly. Many who have never had a trout rod in their hands or seen a trout caught, have heard of " "dry-fly fishing." Some, perhaps, have only the vaguest notion what the expression means. There are,

on the other hand, many who are skilful anglers but whose flies have only been cast in northern streams and highland lochs. They only know about dry-fly fishing by repute as a wonderful art practised in the South. Some may affect to despise it, and others frankly confess (as Mr. Thackeray did when he wrote about the Whigs) that they are not dry-fly fishermen, but oh! how they would like to belong to that select body.

DRY-FLY AND WET-FLY

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Whether dry-fly or wet-fly fishing be the more amusing is a matter of taste. In dry-fly fishing, where the angler is bent on capturing a particular trout under peculiarly difficult conditions, the element of sport is present in its noblest form. The man matches his skill against the natural cunning of a timid fish. I should like, in describing the mysteries of the dry-fly, to remove some misconceptions as to the novelty of the method. I shall also attempt to show when a floating fly is efficacious and when, in my humble opinion, it is absurd to restrict oneself to it.

Now, reduced to the simplest terms, dry-fly fishing means presenting a floating fly to the trout as opposed to a wet or a sunk fly. As a rule, though this is not absolutely essential, the dry-fly fisherman will cast up-stream. It is sometimes possible to float a dry-fly down to a trout which is rising below one. The wet-fly fisherman may fish indifferently up-stream, allowing his fly to drift down towards him, or across, letting the fly come round with the stream, or down-stream, pulling his fly back against the current. Moreover, the dry-fly angler generally tries for a specific

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