trout, especially to the large trout of Thames; and in every river
where I have tried the alder, I have found the bustard wing facile
princeps among all patterns of the fly.

Of palmers (the hairy caterpillars) are many sorts. Ephemera gives
by far the best list yet published. Ronalds has also three good
ones, but whether they are really taken by trout instead of the
particular natural insects which he mentions, is not very certain.
The little coch-a-bonddhu palmer, so killing upon moor streams, may
probably be taken for young larvae of the fox and oak-egger moths,
abundant on all moors, upon trefoils, and other common plants; but
the lowland caterpillars are so abundant and so various in colour
that trout must be good entomologists to distinguish them. Some
distinction they certainly make; for one palmer will kill where
another does not: but this depends a good deal on the colour of the
water; the red palmer, being easily seen, will kill almost anywhere
and any when, simply because it is easily seen; and both the grizzle
and brown palmer may be made to kill by adding to the tail a tuft of
red floss silk; for red, it would seem, has the same exciting effect
on fish which it has upon many quadrupeds, possibly because it is the
colour of flesh. The mackerel will often run greedily at a strip of
scarlet cloth; and the most killing pike-fly I ever used had a body
made of remnants of the huntsman's new 'pink.' Still, there are
local palmers. On Thames, for instance, I have seldom failed with
the grizzled palmer, while the brown has seldom succeeded, and the
usually infallible red never. There is one more palmer worth trying,
which Scotsmen, I believe, call the Royal Charlie; a coch-a-bonddhu
or furnace hackle, over a body of gold-coloured floss silk, ribbed
with broad gold tinsel. Both in Devonshire and in Hampshire this
will kill great quantities of fish, wherever furzy or otherwise wild