This is the very 'sprite' of Walton; this has that vernal and matutinal air of opening European literature, full of birds' music, and redolent of dawn. This is the note to which the age following Walton would not listen. In matter of fact, again, Izaak follows the ancient _Treatise_. We know his jury of twelve flies: the _Treatise_ says:-- 'These ben the xij flyes wyth whyche ye shall angle to the trought and graylling, and dubbe like as ye shall now here me tell. '_Marche_. The donne fly, the body of the donne woll, and the wyngis of the pertryche. Another donne flye, the body of blacke woll, the wyngis of the blackyst drake; and the lay under the wynge and under the tayle.' Walton has:-- 'The first is the dun fly in March: the body is made of dun wool, the wings of the partridge's feathers. The second is another dun fly: the body of black wool; and the wings made of the black drake's feathers, and of the feathers under his tail.' Again, the _Treatise_ has:-- _Auguste_. The drake fly. The body of black wull and lappyd abowte wyth blacke sylke: winges of the mayle of the blacke drake wyth a blacke heed.' Walton has:-- 'The twelfth is the dark drake-fly, good in August: the body made with black wool, lapt about with black silk, his wings are made with the mail of the black drake, with a black head.' This is word for word a transcript of the fifteenth century _Treatise_. But Izaak cites, not the ancient _Treatise_, but Mr. Thomas Barker. {6} Barker, in fact, gives many more, and more variegated flies than Izaak offers in the jury of twelve which he rendered, from the old _Treatise_, into modern English. Sir Harris Nicolas says that the jury is from Leonard Mascall's _Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line_ (London, 1609), but Mascall merely stole from the fifteenth-century book. In Cotton's practice, and that of _The Angler's Vade Mecum_ (1681), flies were as numerous as among ourselves, and had, in many cases, the same names. Walton absurdly bids us 'let no part of the line touch the water, but the fly only.' Barker says, 'Let the fly light first into the water.' Both men insist on fishing down stream, which is, of course, the opposite of the true art, for fish lie with their heads up stream, and trout are best approached from behind. Cotton admits of fishing both up and down, as the wind and stream may serve: and, of course, in heavy water, in Scotland, this is all very well. But none of the old anglers, to my knowledge, was a dry-fly fisher, and Izaak was no fly-fisher at all. He took what he said from Mascall, who took it from the old _Treatise_, in which, it is probable, Walton read, and followed the pleasant and to him congenial spirit of the mediaeval angler. All these writers tooled with huge rods, fifteen or eighteen feet in length, and Izaak had apparently never used a reel. For salmon, he says, 'some use a wheel about the