hat the Alder or Orl fly, is a capital killer when the May-fly
is on. Who shall say that the May-fly short as is its life, has not
undergone all the vicissitudes of a long and eventful life, that it has
not felt all the freshness of youth, all the vigour of maturity, all
the weakness of old age, and all the pangs of death itself?

TO THE MAY-FLY.

Thou art a frail and curious thing,
Engender'd by the sun,
A moment only on the wing,
And thy career is done.

Thou sportest in the evening beam,
An hour, an age to thee,
In gaity above the stream,
Which soon thy grave shall be.

BORTON WILFORD.

THE FLESH FLY.

The Flesh-fly, when the water is low and clear, is one of the most
alluring flies that can be offered to the Trout, but great skill, care,
and judgment are requisite in the use of it; in the hands of an expert
angler, on a close hot day during the month of July, it is a sure and
certain adjunct towards filling a pannier. The fish will take it when
they will not look at an artificial; you will take as large fish with
it as are to be had with any kind of fly, either natural or artificial.
The flies are easily procured in shady places, in woods or fields,
where cattle and horses have left recently made soil. After having
struck them with a bundle of twigs and killed, or stunned, as many as
will answer your purpose, put them into a horn, or anything suitable,
so that they do not escape. Your cast line must be of a length
proportioned to the size of the river or brook where you fish, as a
general rule (if you wade in the water), about a little longer than the
length of your rod,--let your cast line be exceedingly fine, and have
attached to it three-quarters of a yard of the finest round silk-worm
gut,--your hook should be No. 2, put your fly on by inserting the point
of the hook under the head of the fly, and running it through the body,
bringing it out at the tail--you need not make above two or three casts
at a place, and follow the same rule as with the May-fly, viz., to let
the fish turn his head downwards before you strike. Streams are the
likeliest places where they have not time to scan the fly, in that
curiously suspicious and shy manner in which they generally come to it
in smooth water. However when they are in the humour they will take it
anywhere if you can only contrive to keep out of sight, _hie labor
hoc opus est_; this is the trouble and difficulty