INrRODUCriON 



its covers, hesitation is natural in exploring further, 

 lest the contents may not prove worthy of the 

 elegant garb they have been given. Such fears 

 were groundless. 



This work of art and of practical value supplies 

 a need of New England anglers and of the fra- 

 ternity at large, in that every rod-fish of the north- 

 eastern coast, and those of the inland waters of 

 that section, have been gathered en masse, then 

 classified and arranged for the first time in ichthyic 

 literature, that the angler-naturalist, or the less- 

 informed angling tyro, as well as those who are 

 past masters of the art, can be instructed as to the 

 habits, habitats, modes of capture, the best lures, 

 the most serviceable tackle, and last, not least, 

 even the varied and sometimes strangely developed 

 idiosyncrasies of each of the fishes that make their 

 homes in the waters of New England and Eastern 

 Canada, so far as the western limits of the Province 

 of Ontario extends. This information, doubly 

 valuable to the observant and knowledge-seeking 

 angler, is supplemented on nearly every page with 

 object lessons. Kindergarten studies, as it were, in 

 the black and white etchings, anatomically correct 

 and true to life in every detail of form, including 

 the more minute ones of the exact number of rays 

 and spines in the construction of the fins, the trend 



XXV 



