Here is No. 2, a stout-bodied musca, with wings of starling for the smaller sizes, and for the larger of mallard; body of deep blue, purple, claret, or dark bottle-green floss-silk, a shining black hackle, wound close, long, and thick, nearly half down his body, and a few ribs of silver tinsel or twist at his tail. No. 3 is an insinuating "critter," rejoicing in well-separated, long, and upright wings, with grouse, partridge, or mallard underwing, and a mottled mallard breast feather, as outer covers; a body of the long deep coloured fur off an old hare's ear, well mixed with yellow mohair, which should rather predominate towards the tail of the fly. (The dubbing of a grey mouse or water-rat may sometimes be substituted for the hare's ear.) No. 4. Here are beauties; bodies of varying shades of yellow, orange, green, and brown, tipped with gold and silver tinsel. Au reste, the circular breast feathers of the grouse, or old male wood-cock, wound in hackle fashion, for more than two thirds of the whole body, with decreasing intervals towards the head, where the fibres are nipped by the nail, so as to lie in a plane with the curve of the hook, and represent wings. No. 5. Finis coronatopus. (I will communicate my address to the publisher, that you may shew your gratitude, kind reader, in a fitting manner, for the first dish of fish this fly enables you to kill.) The body is of the same material and colour as that of No. 4, varying in the same way. When wings are used, they may be of the lark, starling, grouse, or snipe; the hackling (henceforth shoot every wren in your path; if you have heart to pull trigger on them, it is ten to one you blow away their tails, the only useful part about them)— the hackling, mon ami, of the wren's tail feather, or of the inner feathers of his tiny little wing. The tail hackle solus makes a most blood-thirsty palmer with wings, a most insidious morsel for every kind of trout. Here then are the contents of my trout book, barring a few May-flies, which I retain more, I confess, from old associations than any ideas of their utility; and, most benignant friend, I now candidly state to you my opinion, that whatever exceeds these is mere surplusage-vanity and vexation of spirit, devised by writers of books, makers of fishingtackle, and dreamers of dreams, to mistify and entrap the inexperienced and unwary. With these-varied in size and shades of silk, to suit changes mostly in the colour of the water-I have killed, and hope to kill again, salmon, salmon-peel, trout, white, yellow, red, and brown, in most of the waters throughout Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and France; I never have had a moment's reason to complain of my sport, or envy the store of brother anglers, albeit, armed with folio fly-books, abounding in all the varieties of dubbing, and colour, and hackle, which the art of man could conceive or perpetrate. When next we meet, I trust to inform you of the where and when you may use my flies, to give you a few hints about making them, to defend my theory, and broach some innovations, which, if you wish, I will argue in support of, and to give you a few sketches of an angler's life, worthy of being called Hora arundinenses. Vale. W. H. R. THE CHIEFTAIN IN DANGER. ENGRAVED BY H. BECKWITH, FROM A PAINTING BY THOMPSON. There is scarcely a sport in the wide world which requires so much energy and determination of purpose, so cool a head and so quick a hand, so firm a foot and so pretty a wit"-in short, such a perfection of the mens sana in corpore sano as the ancient art of Deer-stalking. If though this labour of love be something of the severest, the prize, as in most great attempts, is proportionately grand; and only let there be one taste of triumph, one visible sign of a good day's work, success colours the beauties of the country, the enthusiasm of the attendants, the sagacity of the enemy, and the ecstacy of the whole, in a style which, as the advertisements say, "must be tried to be properly appreciated." Still, per contra, after breaking one's bellows in running up hills, skinning the shins in sliding down precipices, and risking one's life in a variety of other romantic encounters with the magnificent scenery-to make a right down mull or a wrong cast of it must be backed by a tolerable amount of the right sort of spirit, especially should it be the essayist's first turn-out. Just let us suppose, by way of example, that the sportsman who is about to have so good and open a chance at the Chieftain, is some gentle southron become partially insane on the subject, by the constant contemplation of Landseer's paintings or Scrope's writings; and that, concentrating the hopes and anxieties of the last six months into one simple crack of the rifle-trembling with excitement, and bewildered with eagerness-he merely hurries off "the antlered monarch" in no slight alarm, and the old hand at his elbow in no little disgust. We know no way of illustrating such a conclusion better than the answer we once heard a north countryman give, when called on for a song:-"Singing, is it? I think I see myself a coming two hundred and forty mile to make a fool of myself!" Depend upon it, worthy stranger, if Wallace Mac Donnel don't say as inuch of you, there may be a slight suspicion of his thinking it, nevertheless. But, again, allowing he does make a hit of it, that he can serve a ne exeat on that bit of full blown dignity, what a change comes o'er the spirit of the man-"O, then, it is sic a bonnie beastie, and 'twas sic a bonnie shot, and he's sic a bonnie mon." The old stalker does feel pleasure in serving a real gentleman who can profit so well by his skilful generalship; the gillies and helpers would never wish for a better "mon" to cut out the work for them, and even the very deer-hounds look up in his face with a kind of respectful admiration, till he cannot actually help believing himself quite as good as any of the track-tracing, venison-finding heroes, who owe their fame to the genius of Fenimore Cooper. When it does come to this-when such Herculean labours meet with such ample reward-why, as Sheridan said of his speech, "it is a deuced. fine thing, and that's the truth of it." BALLS FOR THE DISTEMPER. Tartar emetic twelve grains Camphor two drachms To be mixed and divided into six balls. Give to a large dog two balls, to a small dog one ball, fasting, for several mornings, or as occasion may require. This When dogs first begin to husk is the proper time to attack the disease, and at that period I have frequently given three or four cloves (not heads) of garlic beat up in butter, with success. disease exists in various degrees of virulence: in some instances it is so severe that it will carry off those attacked in twenty-four hours, whilst in others a lingering illness is the result. Major Blagrave, who kept harriers many years, told me that he used to pursue the following method, and that he was convinced it was the cause of saving the lives of a great number of puppies. As soon as he had seven or eight couples, grown very strong and ready to go to quarters, he inquired amongst his neighbours for any young dog which might have become distempered with the milder sort, and which he placed amongst his own puppies, and by thus introducing a less virulent form of the disease amongst them, he seldom or never knew them to sicken afterwards with the distemper in its more aggravated stages, even when they might experience a second attack. The following system has been pursued by that celebrated huntsman, Mr. Wm. Williamson, who has so many years hunted his grace the Duke of Buccleugh's hounds, with great success: "As soon as the young hounds come in from quarters, a sharp look-out is kept for the distemper; and as soon as any of the symptoms appear, a dose of cold-drawn castor oil is given, and the following |