W. C. Stewart’s The Practical Angler, first published in 1857 is now in the public domain and has been scanned by Google Books. You can view it online here http://books.google.com/books?id=Pz8CAA … h7#PPP1,M1 and download it in a .pdf file. Three editions are available, the link above is to the 1874 edition, which is the latest available online.
W. C. Stewart is best known for his three spider patterns (black, red and dun) and for advocating fishing upstream rather than down. The book also has dressings for three winged flies, which along with the three spiders, are all the patterns Stewart thought necessary.
Thanks for the heads up on that.
REE
What a wonderful read. The section on lying fisherman had me rolling. 
That is fantastic, too many of the old books are overpriced by any standards.
I have been doing a bit of historical research on Stewart and James Baillie, the man he credited with giving him the ‘Spider’.
Stewart published his book when he was twenty-four years old and died at thirty-nine.
He was a tea merchant in Edinburgh and died very suddenly.
There is a memoriam to Baillie taken from a book on an earlier Tweed fisher called John Younger.
This memoriam was taken from ?River Angling for Salmon and Trout? by John Younger,
and was added by the editor of the book.
http://www.dtnicolson.dial.pipex.com/page141.html