Fearing. — An Angling Library 71 



letter to the owner, and signed by him, inserted. Other 

 statesmen who were fishermen and who wrote on the 

 subject were John Quincy Adams, De Witt Clinton and 

 Daniel Webster. The latter was a noted trout fisher- 

 man, but his writings on the subject are entirely in the 

 form of letters to various friends. The library owns 

 the trout rod with which he was accustomed to whip 

 the streams of Cape Cod in the latter years of his life. 

 Andrew Lang, Weir Mitchell, and Dr. Van Dyke all 

 loved the art, and presentation copies of the books they 

 wrote are among the library's treasures. 



The library is particularly rich in illustrated books, 

 from what are probably the earliest known pictures of 

 fish in the "Dyalogus," in 1480, mentioned above (the 

 library has framed a woodcut, contemporaneously 

 colored from a religious history of the world published 

 several years earlier and said to be the earliest printed 

 picture of fishing), to the most modern work of the 

 illustrator and engraver of the 20th century. Among 

 so many it is possible to mention but one or two. First, 

 of course, would naturally come the water colors of 

 Stothard mentioned above. Then perhaps comes Eleazar 

 Albin's own copy of his work on "Esculent Fish," 

 originally published in 1794, with 18 plates colored by 

 hand. This copy has sixty full-page water color draw- 

 ings by Albin. It was his evident intention, from the 

 accompanying notes, to issue another volume, which, 

 however, was never published, and these were the draw- 

 ings he made for that purpose. 



Mrs. Bowdich's "Fresh-water Fishes of Great 

 Britain," London, 1828, a very rare and valuable work 

 of which only fifty copies were issued, contains forty- 

 seven plates of fish, drawn from life and colored by 

 hand. 



A copy of Elliot Stock's facsimile reprint of "Dame 

 Barnes' Treatyse of Fysshing with an angle" belonged 

 to Richard Doyle, and he began to illustrate it in color, 

 but left it unfinished. The first few leaves have ten 

 original, humorous and exceedingly clever illustrations in 



