At Punchestown, at the end of April, four Irish sportsmen will be missed, than whom four better never visited there—the late Baron de Robeck, John Hubert Moore, Tom Beasley, and Jack Gubbins.
P.S.—Just as the foregoing was sent to the printer news came of the death, on April 4th, of the greatest friend and life-long comrade of Mr. Gubbins, his brother-in-law, Wray Bury Palliser, of Annestown, County Waterford, J.P., D.L. He was the same type of old-time sportsman, and a genial, jovial companion; loved racing, but never owned racehorses, and in his day was a first-rate man to hounds, well-known in the halcyon days of Curraghmore.
H. S.
Dressing Flies.
Cocking may be (I do not say it is) a thing of the past, but what possibly may not be generally known is the keen interest fly-fishermen still have in the preservation and continuation of certain varieties of the old fighting breeds of English game. Many find it adds pleasure to the delights of catching fish to capture them with flies of their own making, and several of these (all amateurs) can and do turn out at the present day better work than has ever before been seen. But to achieve this the right material must be to hand, and from the start difficulty will be experienced in procuring hackles of the right colour, texture, and—most important in the case of chalk-stream fishermen—size. For frequently the July and August trout is not to be beguiled in the mid-day heat by anything bigger than a 000 hook, and the barnyard fowl wears no feathers that will hackle this; its fibres are much too long. Dyeing is largely resorted to to obtain with less trouble the exact hues required, but this does not entirely get over the difficulty, as the commoner red and ginger hackles will not serve as the groundwork for, say, a pale olive, and the blue, the honey and other light-coloured duns are just the ones that are most difficult to lay hands on. So it comes about that to mention blue dun game in the presence of a fly-tier produces much the same effect as the word “rats” does on any well-brought-up terrier.
At the present time, if the dun game varieties are wanted the best localities to search are the West of England, from Cornwall and Devon, through Wales to Cumberland, a circumstance which it is somewhat tempting to endeavour to connect with the driving into these parts of the British, amongst whom, as we know, the Romans introduced cocking, but this must be left to the antiquarians; probably it is only a coincidence due either to the presence of many fishing waters in those districts, or to the fact that in out-of-the-way England old customs died hard, and the law against cock-fighting was not so stringently carried out as in the counties more immediately under the eyes of the lawgivers, whereby the breeds have lasted longer there.
Gervase Markham, who wrote in the early part of the seventeenth century, had a poor opinion of the duns, but his strictures on their merits as fighting birds are not upheld by Robert Howlet, himself an author of an angling book, who writes, in 1807, that as to colour of cocks “there is nothing in it, for the world affords no better birds for the game than many of your duns and whites prove.” However, in most lists made out in order of merit this colour comes at the bottom, which perhaps accounts for the little space devoted to it in the literature so far consulted. I quote Mr. Harrison Weir’s description of the breed as far as regards plumage: “The truest and most rare” (of the duns) “is the blue dun, and these are sub-divided into light and dark. The hackle of the cock bird should be of an intense indigo-blue, and very bright, also the back and the tail-coverts; the wing having a distinct bar; the breast and thighs, as well as the tail, of a beautiful blue dun colour; the face red, with a dark rim round the eye, or dark eyelid; comb and wattles a brilliant vermilion.”
By diligent search specimens of these birds may still be found and procured, though in most instances only at the expenditure of much diplomatic skill and suasion, including that which is not allowed at election times, for if the owner supplies the trade he naturally is interested in limiting the supply and keeping intact a little “corner” of his own; if, on the other hand, he is a breeder by family tradition, money is little likely to induce him to part with his best. Still, perseverance does wonders, and either by getting sittings of eggs, or by picking up individual cockerels and pullets at prices such as are asked from hunt secretaries and treasurers of poultry funds, several enthusiastic fishermen are just now making a beginning at breeding on their own account.
It must not be thought that this is a new departure, for within the last thirty years two poultry shows, one at the Crystal Palace in 1871, and another at the Westminster Aquarium in 1892, have been held, at which prizes were offered both for hackles suitable for fly-dressing and for the birds which yielded them; but at this moment fresh interest seems to be aroused, more and more men are learning to tie, and thereby induced to breed, so that it should not be long ere such prizes shall be again competed for at the big poultry shows, which will by this means attract a visit from many to whom otherwise a fowl presents no points of interest except at meal-times.