xvi Introductory, 



know that the love of out-door sport of 

 all kinds is so strong among the sons 

 and daughters of the great Republican 

 branch of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is 

 this constant drain to America which 

 makes these books become scarcer every 

 year. When I first began collecting, 

 one could secure a good copy of the first 

 edition of Walton for 20 or 30. 

 Now it is worth five or six times as 

 much. The fact is, these books never 

 come back into the English market. An 

 Englishman makes a collection ; but 

 sooner or later he dies, and the chances 

 are that his collection is dispersed among 

 other English collectors by being sold at 

 auction; and I am convinced it is not 

 so much the competition of English 

 collectors, as the gradual exhaustion of 

 the stock in this country by the Americans, 

 which makes old books on angling fetch 

 a higher price than any other class of 

 book. 



Only the other day I purchased a fine 

 copy of Waltoris second edition (even 



