OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 



ON 



THE BOOK OF THE PIKE.' 



Field, " Since the days of Nobbes, the father of trollers, no work 

 has issued from the press likely to carry such consternation into the 

 homes and haunts of the tyrant of the waters as the book before us. 

 .... Mr. Pennell has certainly taken in the pike and done for him, 

 and there is nothing left for succeeding writers on .pike-fishing to 

 teil their readers. He has exhausted the subject, arid has done it so 

 well and so deftly, that one wanders on, and on, through his pleasant 

 pages, wondering where he has gathered all this pike-lore from, and 

 how it is that in a somewhat restricted subject like the history of, 

 and means of capture employed upon one particular fish, he has 

 contrived to beguile one of any sense of tedium. On the practical 

 department of his book we need enlarge but little. Mr. Pennell is 

 so well known to be a senior angler in the art he professes, that it is 

 lar better to let him speak for himself and to recommend our readers 

 to cull his directions from the fountain-head, than to attempt to 

 condense them in simply mangled fragments. As for criticising 

 them, there is no need of it." 



Sporting Gazette. "That there is an actual necessity for and 

 value attached to such an addition to the fisherman's library, apart 

 from the consideration of the literary and piscatory talents of the 

 author, will readily be conceded by those who are awa7~e that no English 

 work has ever before been devoted exclusively to pike-fishing. We 

 may therefore congratulate ourselves that such an addition has come 

 to us, and from such a source. . . . Part II. exhausts, we may ,say, 

 completely and satisfactorily, all the various details of each method 

 of pike-fishing." 



Land and Water. "'Has this book a sufficient excuse for exis- 

 tence '?' Mr. Pennell asks in his preface. The best of excuses we 

 reply. Since Nobbes, of the dark ages, no substantial treatise on 

 pike-fishing has been given to the world, if we except those of Salter 

 and "Otter" the one a Cockney, the other a catchpenny pro- 

 duction. The Boole of the Pike, on the contrary, is the work of a 

 scholar and a gentleman, and of a senior angler to boot, and it treats 

 its subject exhaustively." 



BelVs Life. "This is in every sense of the word a clever book, 

 and is, moreover, as useful as it is unpretending. . . . We can with 

 every satisfaction endorse the prophetic suggestion of Mr. Westwood, 

 whose Bibliographical Anglomania is known and admired by all 

 anglers of note, when he says that ' Posterity will agree to designate 

 Mr. Peunell the 'Father of Pike-fishers.' A naturalist and a most 

 genial writer, Mr. Pennell is also a student. in history, and the charm 

 ot his teaching is heightened by its graceful and g ntle utterance." 



