Notes on the book

Dry Fly Entomology by Frederic M. Halford, published in London in 1897, was the inspiration for Mayflies of the Driftless Region. Halford, the Victorian innovator and popularizer of modern fly-fishing, scientifically described and surveyed the principal British mayflies of his time, but he did not claim his work as a comprehensive entomological treatise. Instead, Dry Fly Entomology was aimed at providing anglers with a basic, working understanding of the nature of aquatic insects. Mayflies of the Driftless Region can make no such claim; it is not a field guide. Instead, it is a study of mayflies by an artist.

I began this project with little practical knowledge of mayfly entomology. It was not the information in Halford’s Dry Fly Entomology that caught my attention, but rather the detailed wood engravings that illustrated it. While Mayflies of the Driftless Region may provide useful information for fishermen and women of similar naïveté, the essence of the book is art. I have created 13 depictions of mayflies, color wood engravings with each hue printed from a separate block of end-grain maple. These images are the result of careful microscopic study of specimens collected from streams near my home in rural Wisconsin.

Entomologist Clarke Garry, professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, has written text to accompany each of the images. Professor Garry documents the series of taxonomic steps involved in the formal scientific identification of each of the specimens. In the context of a scientific journal, these identifications would likely be dry and difficult reading for most of us. However, in the pages of a finely printed book, the poetic nature of the language can be appreciated. Sometimes Dr. Garry would encounter a problem in taking a specimen to species, and, being a scientist, speculation was not an option. I urged him to make notes as to why a particular species determination proved elusive. For the final two specimens in the book, taxonomy is absent: the text is all notes. His final note: "Taxonomy is an extremely dynamic discipline. I thought you might be interested in knowing that Ephemeerella inermis has, as of Jacobus and McCafferty (2003), been revised to Ephemerella excrucians."

Science is fluid, like everything else. The scientist, and the artist, do basically the same thing: we observe the world around us, and record our observations as best we can.

TRADE EDITION
6 x 9 inches. 88 pages. 1,000 copies. 14 color wood engravings (13 specimen plates plus a microscope) by Gaylord Schaniec. 13 entemological identifications of specimens by Dr. Clarke Garry. Hand-set in Bembo monotype. Printed on Monadnock acid free paper. Bound in full cloth. Dust jacket. $85. More info. & purchase

The Prints

Individual signed and numbered prints from Mayflies of the Driftless Region
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• MINUTE BLUEWINGED OLIVE - Baetis flavistriga
• Baetis sp.
• Baetis sp. 1
• BROWN DRAKE - E. simulans
• PALE MORNING DUN - E. inermis
• SULPHER - E. needhami
• HENDRICKSON - E. subvaria
• Heterocloeon anoka
• HEX - Hexogenia bilineata
• Stenonema? Heptagenia? sp.
• MARCH BROWN - S. vicarium sp. (male)
• MARCH BROWN - S. vicarium sp. (female)
• TRICO - Tricorythodes sp.
• BROADSIDE E. inermis Pale Morning Dun

MINUTE BLUEWINGED OLIVE Baetis flavistriga
Dimensions: 2½ x 5 inches Monadnock Edition size: 200, Price: $200

Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 4, Price: $360

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Baetis sp.
Dimensions: 2½ x 2½ inches

Monadnock Edition size: 200, Price: $200

Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 3, Price: $400

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Baetis sp. 1
Dimensions: 3½ x 3¼ inches

Monadnock Edition size: 200, Price: $200

Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 3, Price: $280

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BROWN DRAKE Ephemera simulans
Dimensions: 6 x 5½ inches

Monadnock Edition size: 360, Price: $200

Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 6, Price: $360

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PALE MORNING DUN Ephemerella inermis
Dimensions: 4 x 3½ inches

Monadnock Edition size: 250, Price: $200

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SULPHER E. needhami
Dimensions: 3½ x 3½ inches

Monadnock Edition size: 195, Price: $200

Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 2, Price: $360

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HENDRICKSON E. subvaria
Dimensions: 4½ x 3¼ inches

Monadnock Edition size: 250, Price: $200

Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 1, Price: $280

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Heterocloeon anoka
Dimensions: 3 x 3½ inches

Monadnock Edition size: 230, Price: $200

Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 3, Price: $360

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HEX Hexogenia bilineata
Dimensions: 9½ x 9 inches

Monadnock Edition size: 125, Price: $200

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Stenonema? Heptagenia? sp.
Dimensions: 5 x 7 inches

Monadnock Edition size: 200, Price: $200

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Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 2, Price: $360 OUT OF PRINT

MARCH BROWN S. vicarium sp. (male)
Dimensions: 5 x 6 inches

Monadnock Edition size: 235, Price: $225

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Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 2, Price: $360
OUT OF PRINT

MARCH BROWN S. vicarium sp. (female)
Dimensions: 5 x 7 inches

Monadnock Edition size: 265, Price: $225

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Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 2, Price: $360
OUT OF PRINT

TRICO Tricorythodes sp.
Dimensions: 2¼ x 4 inches

Monadnock Edition size: 260, Price: $200

Gampi Torinoko Edition size: 2, Price: $360

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Ephemerella inermis Broadside
Clarke Garry,
Midnight Paper Sales, 2003.
Dimensions: 9 x 12 inches
Zerkall Edition size: 168, Price: $65

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COMPLETE SETS OF PRINTS
Monadnock, Edition set size: 13, Price: $2,000