May 5, 1904] 



NA TURE 



FROM THE A\'GI.ER'S POINT OF VIEW. 

 Trout Fishing. By W. Earl Hodgson. Pp. xviii4- 



276. (London : .\. and C. Black, 1904.) Price 



7^. 6d. net. 

 Fishing Holidays. By Stephen Gwynn. Pp. 1.^ + 299. 



(London: Macniillan and Co., Ltd., 1904.) Price 



ys. bd. net. 

 .4)1 .Inglcr's Year. By Charles S. Patterson. Pp. 



xii+192. (London: \V. R. Russell and Co., Ltd., 



n.d.) Price 2S. bd. 



THE first two of these books are not in any sense 

 books of reference or guides for the angler ; Mr. 

 Gwynn frankly states that his object is not instruction 

 but amusement, but it is no ground of complaint that 

 the former as well as the latter is to be found in his 

 descriptions of his fishing holidays. Mr. Hodg- 

 son's is a pleasantly trivial book, interesting as giving 

 the views of an experienced fisherman on many points, 

 but no more instructive, in fact, than Mr. (iwynn's 

 in intention. The former is at his best when describ- 

 ing matters of his own observation ; " the whustler " 

 would take a lot of beating as a piece of pure narrative, 

 and is almost on a level with Mr. Gwynn 's best; it 

 calls for equal admiration in the vigour with which 

 an almost Homeric battle is described, and the delicacy 

 w ith which a veil is drawn over the undignified end of 

 a noble fish, but it is scarcely possible to extend this 

 admiration to the delicacy with which twenty-one of 

 the author's friends and a daily newspaper are veiled 

 in the obscurity of initialled dashes, which are fre- 

 quently inadequate as a disguise and always typo- 

 graphically unsightly. 



Mr. Hodgson deserves great praise for his effort 

 to figure adequately in colours a series of trout 

 flies, and the result is really very pleasing ; we wish 

 we could add really successful, but it seems very 

 doubtful whether the three-colour process is suited to 

 this class of work; the reds, and especially the clarets, 

 are not satisfactory, and a comparison of the different 

 representations given of, e.g., the cow-dung, olive dun, 

 or black gnat seems to show that sufficient accuracy 

 for work of this nature cannot be obtained by the 

 process employed. The excellent reproduction of a 

 picture of a group of brown trout given as a frontis- 

 piece may almost serve as a contrast to the figures of 

 flies to show the class of subjects well and ill suited 

 for illustration by this method. It would have been 

 interesting to have had more explanation in the book 

 itself of the flies figured and the reasons for their 

 selection, especially from so ardent an advocate of the 

 wet fly- as Mr. Hodgson. 



Mr. Gwynn's book is most delightful; we have read 

 much of it before in various periodicals, but nothing 

 is lost in reading it again in book form, and the print 

 and general get-up are so good as to give an additional 

 pleasure to the reader. The proverb which Micky 

 applied to the author's efforts to catch a salmon — to 

 misquote it — Is fada do leabhar gan bradan, cannot 

 in any sense be applied to his efforts to write a book ; 

 it is the book that is too short, and there is a wonderful 

 store of really useful information not only as to salmon, 

 but as to trout and, in one excellent essay, pilchards. 

 NO. I 80 1, VOL. 70] 



L'niike Mr. Hodgson's book, Mr. Patterson's " An 

 Angler's Year " contains a large amount of inform- 

 ation which should be of the greatest assistance to the 

 beginner. The method by which the author deals with 

 his subject is good ; he selects typical .days from each 

 month in the year (except March, which he not un- 

 fairly regards as " the silly season of angling "■), and 

 describes actual experiences of his own, illustrating 

 them with information as to the best gear and method 

 of using it in each instance. Without ever becoming 

 didactic, Mr. Patterson gives a great deal of most 

 useful advice upon many forms of fishing, and is 

 equally interesting whether he treats of trout or conger. 

 There is one addition which would, we think, be 

 appreciated in any future edition, and that is an index, 

 and it really seems an undue economy of space to print 

 advertisements on the back of the title-page and table 

 of contents; still, these are but details (as is the quaint 

 misprint which causes the pike to figure as Essex 

 liicius), and in no way affect the value of what 

 appears to us a very practical and useful little book. 



It has lately been suggested that there is nowadays 

 too great a tendency to attribute human characteristics 

 to animals ; the fisherman certainly tends to attribute 

 them to fish ; Mr. Patterson expresses a conviction 

 that the Test trout know more than the anglers ; Mr. 

 Hodgson combats at some length the views of those 

 who hold that trout are cunning; both are at issue 

 with Sir Herbert Maxwell as to a trout's sense of 

 colour. The task of approaching the presumed feel- 

 ings of a fish — especially with a view to deceive — • 

 without attributing to it some almost human qualities, 

 even as Mr. Patterson attributes the cunning of the 

 carp to the size of its brain and the fulness of its years, 

 is not easy ; there is a tendency almost automatically 

 to put oneself in the place of the fish and to try to 

 look at the world from that standpoint, and to do this 

 one must, to some degree, give the fish human views. 

 Our fish are certainly more interesting a little 

 humanised, and one can feel a real sympathy for M. 

 Guitel's goby and his efforts to find a mate which a 

 mere bald narrative of facts would not evoke ; but in 

 reading books on fishing one cannot help wondering 

 Vk'hether it is really the fish or only the fisherman who 

 likes some peculiarly compounded paste or some 

 particular tying of a favourite fly. Somehow, while 

 feeling sure that Mr. Gwynn and Mr. Hodgson are 

 right in insisting on the importance of the size of fly 

 used, we yet feel some suspicion that it is the former 

 author and not the fish he angled for that had no taste 

 for worms. L. \V. B. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 



Hctrachtiiugen iihcr das Wescn der Lebenserscnetn- 

 uiigen. Ein Beitrag ziini Begriff des Protoplasmas. 

 By Prof. R. Neumeister. Pp. ivH-io7. (Jena: 

 Gustav Fischer, 1903.) Price 2 marks. 

 This is an essay — critical and constructive — on the 

 mechanical and vitalistic interpretations of the pheno- 

 mena of life. Biology has oscillated from the one posi- 

 tion to the other since the days of Harvey. Some 

 progress in the physico-chemical analysis of an 

 abstracted part or process of the organism is made, and 



