Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. FLY-DRESSING. " Thou, Nature, art my goddess : to thy law My services are bound." —King Lear. A LMOST every writer on angling since the days of old Izaak, has prefaced his chapter on this subject with the observation that it is nearly if not quite impossible, by merely printed instructions, however explicit, to make any one an expert or even a tolerably fair fly-dresser. Certainly the art did not come to me through any such instructions; and a practical fly-maker myself, I am at one with others in the belief that a volume of details would fail to impart it to any. For fly- dressing is an art—a humble art, if you will, but still an art as much as painting is. In both we set ourselves to represent nature in form and tint, and equally in both we must follow nature as our guide. The principles of the art may be given, butthe art itself, in the application of these principles, must be acquired. And should the tyro ask, How ? I am inclined to answer him, as Opie answered his pupil who wished to know with what the great painter mixed his colours, " With brains, sir!" But, postulating the "brains," I can instruct the beginner in the materials for fly-making, and tell him, as far as words can, what he is to do with them. I may tell him, too, that he must train his eye to discern the features of the natural fly, and his hand to reproduce these features in all their delicacy and grace. But I cannot give him the true eye and the delicate touch ; they come not by instruction. They may come, however, through close observation and constant practice in intelligently following the natural model after a good method. "Practice makes perfection," says the proverb. Yes; but until we reach perfection, we shall never know how much practice leads thereto. There is no finalit...