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. Local Colour. Not the least of the many attractions of angling is, I fancy, the opportunity it affords one of wandering in an almost illimitable field of speculation. I have long ago convinced myself that many of the ways of fish, like the ways of Providence, are past finding out, yet I would be the last, if chary of theorising myself, to throw cold water on the theorist. Most of our great angling writers have been great theorists as well as great anglers, and possibly all the greater as anglers because they have been great theorists. Even when their theories have been proved to bear no real relation to the facts, as was the case with Thomas Tod Stoddart's exploded theory regarding the propagation of the Salmonida, the argument has been none the less interesting. I am tempted, after this prelude, to follow in the wake of my betters and indulge myself in a little idle speculation regarding the colour question in its application to the artificial fly. I have really no particular theory to advance after all, but would merely content myself with suggesting some general reasons why it may be possible that artificial flies of certain colours appeal more effectively to rising fish than do flies of other colours in particular places and at particular seasons of the year. This is not a subject by any means novel, but since the results of Dr. Ward's remarkable subaqueous experiments have become known to the angling public much that is interesting has been published in various periodicals relative to the subject. It has been pointed out in these by some writers that the prevailing tint of the bottom holding the water traversed by the fly affects the colouration of the latter to an unexpected extent. I have for my own part been for long of the opinion that anglers wer...