48 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



A very good set of the first live editions of Walton's * Compleat Angler ' 

 came up for sale on December 1st at Messrs. Sotherby's, among the 

 choice library of books on angling formed by the late Mr. Edward Snow, of 

 Boston, Mass., U.S.A. These five editions were those which appeared 

 during the lifetime of Izaak Walton, and the Snow copies are uniformly 

 bound in olive morocco extra by F. Bedford. The set was knocked down 

 to Messrs. Pickering and Chatto for £-235. The Ashburnham set, unique 

 as regards size and condition, realized £800 in May last, and some of the 

 volumes possessed the further sentimental advantage of having the author's 

 autograph notes written in them. The Snow copies were slightly " shaved " 

 in some places, and some of the leaves in the first issue were defective, and 

 the entire set was sold " not subject to return." A second copy of the 

 second edition of the same work, with many of the headlines cut into, 

 brought £19 15s., and three other copies of the third edition respectively 

 sold for £12 10s., £35, and £ll. Other angling books included an im- 

 perfect copy of ' The Secrets of Augliug,' by John Dennys, 1652, £36. The 

 total of the sale of 669 lots amounted to £1280. 



Mr. F. T. Mott, of Crescent House, Leicester, has reprinted in 

 pamphlet form two papers expressing his theories on the " Origin of 

 Organic Colour," which were respectively contributed to ' Science,' and read 

 at the Nottingham Meeting of the British Association in 1893. Mr. Mott 

 predicates a " great concentrating wave of organic life in its progress 

 towards an unknown climateric," as a result of which " the beauty of 

 summer as we know it now, though it has never been paralleled in the past, 

 will be as nothing to the blaze of brilliance which shall mark the summers 

 of the future." " In the animal world brilliant colour is still comparatively 

 rare, this branch oi the organic wave being perhaps less advanced than that 

 which rules the department of vegetation." 



