38 



The Chronicle of 



Of the amount of labour accomplifhed fince then, and of 

 the large increafe of angling-books, within the laft fifty years, 

 our readers will have an idea when we inform them that 

 thelateft lift, the <c New Bibliotheca Pifcatoria," 1 for the com- 

 pilation of which the prefent writer is refponfible, includes no 

 lefs than fix hundred and fifty works on angling, and has 

 fince been confiderably extended. 



As regards the modern multiplication of fuch books, there 

 can be little queftion that it is to be attributed lefs to the 

 numerical increafe of anglers, than to the improved character 

 of the works themfelves, and to the wider range of fubjects 

 which they now embrace. Recent days have, in fact, brought 

 back to the angler and his literature, a reaction and a rehabili- 

 tation. With Sir Humphrey Davy and Chriftopher North 

 was ufhered in an era of found, practical, philofophical, and 

 manly writers, who have fucceeded in raifing the art to a fair 

 average level, as remote from the myftical aflumptions of the 

 earlier epoch, as from the maudlin feeblenefs that ftamped 

 the period of its decadence. And with this pofition we have 

 every reafon to be fatisfied. 



Mr. H. R. Francis, in his clever Cambridge EfTay, 2 entitled 

 c< The Fly Fifher and his Library," recommends the afibcia- 

 tion of a collection of angling-books with the plant of every 

 angling club in the kingdom, a motion which we fecond moft 

 cordially, recommending it, in particular to the adoption of 

 the c Walton and Cotton Club,' on which body corporate, from 



1 London. ' Field' Office, 346, Strand, 1S61. 



2 London : J. W. Parker and Son, 1856, pp. 233-60. 



