CHAPTER XV. 



AMERICAN ANGLING LITERATURE. 



THE history of angling literature in America is not difficult to trace for one 

 who has clasped hands with those who were sponsers at its christening, and has 

 had the good fortune to know personally almost every author of note since the 

 era of angling books began ; but to do full justice to each one, and to apportion 

 to each the part he has borne, and the good he has done, is a difficult task, likely 

 to become invidious. There are many exceedingly valuable contributors to the 

 general fund of information in the several departments of ichthyology, who do 

 not appear as authors, and there are comparatively few authors who write on 

 the basis of their own personal observations and experience, trusting rather to 

 the statements of accepted authorities to insure accuracy for their publications, 

 and give them the requisite backbone. My preference would be not to laud the 

 popular author so much as to designate such as have been able to contribute any- 

 thing at all to the sum total of knowledge, and to an intelligent comprehension of 

 the fishes of the country. There was a time when a printed volume was the 

 emanation or expression of a mind which was master of its subject, and its 

 opinions were entitled to respect as those of one speaking by authority, and not 

 as the scribes; but, nowadays, well as Joel Penman pertinently remarks, "Any 

 fule kin rite a buke !" 



There is no end to the literature of angling. One is amazed at its redund- 

 ancy. Everyone who goes a-fishing must needs tell of it in the sporting papers, 

 if not in more pretentious publications. Their manifold collective utterances are 

 like the chattering of blackbirds in spring, joyful but vapid; yet they include a 

 fair proportion of monographs and random field notes, which, in the aggregate, 

 form an exceedingly valuable compendium of ichthyological research. Much of 

 this class of materials has been already collated and compiled by the collaborates 

 of the Smithsonian Institution into several illustrated quarto volumes, entitled 

 "Fisheries Industries of the United States." The full statistics of the past having 

 been brought down to date, and the work thoroughly systematized, it will be 

 prosecuted to the end of time, as long as fish swim and Congressional appropria- 

 tions can be voted for collection and printing. The steps progressive toward the 

 ultimate accomplishment may be partially outlined in the brief synopsis which 

 follows. 



In earliest Colonial times, the reports sent to the Home Governments from 

 New England, Virginia, and Florida included a fair description or enumeration 

 of the ichthyofauna of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts ; and, as the population grad- 

 ually spread towards the Ohio river and the Great Lakes, interest was continually 

 kept alive by the multiplying forms which were discovered. Angling was some- 

 times practised by gentlemen of leisure, as we discover from a musty little volume 

 printed in Philadelphia in 1830, and most interesting it is, too which gives the 

 "Memoirs of the Schuylkill Fishing Club" from 1732 to 1830. Such a diary, 

 extending over a period of nearly one hundred years, must be without a parallel 

 in any land. The subsequent occupation and development of the country opened 

 out an immense and abounding field for the angler and his inseparable associates, 



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