NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 427 



A Handy Book of Fishery Management. By J. W. Willis 

 Bund, F.L.S. Lawrence & Bullen, Limited. 



The main teaching of this book, and which will attract our 

 readers, is how to observe the life-histories of fishes. We have 

 excellent field-ornithologists who have acquired their knowledge 

 direct from nature, but how few have directed the same attention 

 to freshwater fishes. In a moderately deep stream it is not so 

 easy to decide always whether a fish is a Trout or a Grayling. 

 But here a knowledge of habits will decide the question. A 

 Trout can keep still, a Grayling cannot. " The rough tests are 

 size for Salmon, immobility for Trout, mobility for Grayling." 

 If any one wants to know if there are Tench in a pool, " let him 

 go and sit beside it some warm evening in June, just before it is 

 dark, and then, if he hears a splashing among the water-plants, 

 and sees the leaves disturbed, he can rest quite certain that there 

 are Tench in the pool, and that they are spawning." And many 

 other hints to the observer in a little-worked study is afforded, 

 which should render a stream as full of interest as a wood, and 

 prove that a knowledge of the habits of our fishes is not confined 

 alone to a capacity for hooking them. We all know how an 

 overhanging or adjacent tree or bush affords an insect banquet 

 to a crowd of fishes in the stream. Mr. Bund gives a very 

 practical example. " A stream comes down from the Welsh 

 hills, which are open, bare, and uncultivated. A large larch 

 plantation has been made. Above the plantation the Trout 

 average seven to the pound ; below they average five, and the 

 difference in my opinion is entirely due to the quantity of food 

 the plantation turns out into the river." 



No one who wishes to successfully manage a fishery can afford 

 to be without a precise knowledge of the habits and life-histories 

 of fishes. This knowledge is seldom cultivated by angling pre- 

 servationists. The writer of this notice, who in earlier days mixed 

 much with anglers and pursued the craft, always found that he 

 belonged to a brotherhood that knew how to catch, but was no 

 match in real natural history of the subject with the village 

 poacher, a worthy whose detested success is based on practical 

 observation. Mr. Bund's book, besides detailing the secrets of 

 Fishery Management, gives much information on a subject which 

 is strikingly absent from * The Zoologist ' "Notes and Queries." 



