I not seen poor old Si. Wilder, king of Thames fishermen (now gone
home to his rest), shaking his huge sides with delight over thy
mighty deeds, as his fourteen-inch whiskers fluttered in the breeze
like the horsetail standard of some great Bashaw, while crystal
Thames murmured over the white flints on Monkey Island shallow, and
the soft breeze sighed in the colossal poplar spires, and the great
trout rose and rose, and would not cease, at thee, my alder-fly?
Have I not seen, after a day in which the earth below was iron, and
the heavens above as brass, as the three-pounders would have thee,
and thee alone, in the purple August dusk, old Moody's red face grow
redder with excitement, half proud at having advised me to 'put on'
thee, half fearful lest we should catch all my lady's pet trout in
one evening? Beloved alder-fly! would that I could give thee a soul
(if indeed thou hast not one already, thou, and all things which
live), and make thee happy in all aeons to come! But as it is, such
immortality as I can I bestow on thee here, in small return for all
the pleasant days thou hast bestowed on me.

Bah! I am becoming poetical; let us think how to tie an alder-fly.

The common tie is good enough. A brown mallard, or dark hen-pheasant
tail for wing, a black hackle for legs, and the necessary peacock-
herl body. A better still is that of Jones Jones Beddgelert, the
famous fishing clerk of Snowdonia, who makes the wing of dappled
peacock-hen, and puts the black hackle on before the wings, in order
to give the peculiar hunch-backed shape of the natural fly. Many a
good fish has this tie killed. But the best pattern of all is tied
from the mottled wing-feather of an Indian bustard; generally used,
when it can be obtained, only for salmon flies. The brown and fawn
check pattern of this feather seems to be peculiarly tempting to