FISHING BIBLIOGRAPHY. 7 



the sale of the Rev. F. Corser's library in 1869 ; £(il for an 

 illustrated Walton at the sale of W. S. Higgs's library in 

 1830; and £^0 for a Dr. Gardiner's Booke of Angling or 

 Fishing (1606), at the sale of Mr. Lynch Cotton's collection 

 in 1856. Dr. Dibden, in his Bibliomania, rightly says that 

 "catalogues are to bibliographers what reports are to 

 lawyers — not to be read through from end to end, but to be 

 consulted on doubtful points." When priced, and with 

 purchasers' names, their importance, both as standards of 

 value and means of tracing the proprietorship of rare and 

 curious books, is sufficiently obvious. The present seems 

 to be an age of Bibliothecas ; and it may be incidentally 

 mentioned that among recent productions of this character 

 the BibliotJieca Nicotiana — ' A Catalogue of Books about 

 Tobacco '—which mentions over 400 works of various 

 kinds, and was privately printed in 1880, in connection with 

 Mr. Bragge's collection of books and objects connected 

 with tobacco, is almost as great a success as the Bibliotheca 

 Piscatoria. 



Speaking of piscatorial libraries, the authors of the 

 Bibliotheca Piscatoria acknowledge their indebtedness to 

 several private collections, including those of Mr. Joseph 

 Grego, and Mr. Alfred Denison of Albemarle Street. The 

 former is a large collection, principally of old English 

 books, many of them very scarce, which had taken fifty 

 years of patient labour to collect. Anglers and biblio- 

 philists of this country will regret to hear that they have 

 recently found a new owner in the United States, whither 

 so many piscatory libraries, or the pick of them, are con- 

 stantly making their way. The library of Mr. Denison, of 

 Albemarle Street, access to which the writer most grate- 

 fully acknowledges, may truly be said to be unique, both 

 for the number and value of its books on angling, and 



