Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

The natural history of these flies, I understand from Mr. Stainton (one of our most distinguished entomologists), has not yet been worked out, at least for England. The only attempt, I believe, in that direction is one made by a charming book, “The Fly-fisher’s Entomology,” which should be in every good angler’s library; but why should not a few fishermen combine to work out the subject for themselves, and study for the interests both of science and their own sport, “The Wonders of the Bank?” The work, petty as it may seem, is much too great for one man, so prodigal is Nature of her forms, in the stream as in the ocean; but what if a correspondence were opened between a few fishermen— of whom one should live, say, by the Hampshire or Berkshire chalk streams; another on the slates and granites of Devon; another on the limestones of Yorkshire or Derbyshire; another among the yet earlier slates of Snowdonia, or some mountain part of Wales; and more than one among the hills of the Border and the lakes of the Highlands? Each would find (I suspect), on comparing his insects with those of the others, that he was exploring a little peculiar world of his own, and that with the exception of a certain number of typical forms, the flies of his county were unknown a hundred miles away, or, at least, appeared there under great differences of size and colour; and each, if he would take the trouble to collect the caddises and water-crickets, and breed them into the perfect fly in an aquarium, would see marvels in their transformations, their instincts, their anatomy, quite as great (though not, perhaps, as showy and startling) as I have been trying to point out on the sea-shore. Moreover, each and every one of the party, I will warrant, will find his fellow-correspondents (perhaps previously unknown to him) men worth knowing; not, it may be, of the meditative and half-saintly type of dear old Izaak Walton (who, after all, was no fly-fisher, but a sedentary “popjoy” guilty of float and worm), but rather, like his fly-fishing disciple Cotton, good fellows and men of the world, and, perhaps, something better over and above.