628 LITERATURE OF SEA AND RIVER FISHING. 



Fisherman ddightfal books of a high literary cast, inter- 

 spersed with much humour. The present writer often had 

 the pleasure of chatting with him when he was Vicar of 

 St. Mary Church, South Devon, where he died. He was a 

 most charming raconteur especially of piscatory - incidents. 

 Dr. Badham's Prose Halieutics ; or Ancient and Modern 

 Fish Tattle, was welcomed by a very large number of 

 readers in 1854. It has been already mentioned as one of 

 the most interesting books of its kind ever written, and it 

 would be almost easier to say what there is not in it than 

 what there is, comprising as it does an almost endless 

 variety of chit-chat, and that, too, of the most learned kind 

 about fish and fishing. Dr. Badham is particularly " great " 

 on opsophagy. In the same year Robert Knox, M.D., who 

 affected to be a scientific naturalist and special authority 

 on Salmonoid biology, cannot be said to have added lustre 

 to angling literature by the publication of his Fish and Fish- 

 ing in the lone Glens of Scotland. Though, perhaps, hardly 

 deserving of the terrible lashing the book and its author get 

 at the hands of Mr. H. R. Francis ; still, a writer who lays 

 down angling and ichthyological law in an offensively 

 authoritative manner, muddles up Salmo salar and Salmo 

 fario, denies the Highlands the credit of being an angling 

 country, and describes the Test as a " quiet muddy stream " 

 almost puts himself beyond the pale of toleration. It is, 

 however, but fair to the author to say that there is a good 

 deal of interesting reading in his book, apart from its many 

 blemishes. 



W. C. Stewart's Practical A ngler ; or, the Art of Trout 

 Fishing, is another of the books which no fly-fisherman 

 should leave unstudied. The first edition of the Practical 

 Angler appeared in 1857, and the last in 1877, fi ve years 

 after the author's death. Mr. Stewart was known as one 



