May 29, 1909-] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
877 
MR. FEARING’S ANGLING LIBRARY. 
Concluded from page 861. 
while not strictly included among Waltoniana, 
has at least a corollary claim to attention. 
This is a silver bust of the great angler which 
was made at Gorham’s to Mr. Bearing's order 
to commemorate his acquisition of the first five 
editions of “The Compleat Angler.” One of 
the busts was cast in silver for Mr. Feanng’s 
library, and twenty-four in bronze as gifts to 
friends, after which the mold was taken by Mr. 
Fearing to remove the possibility of overstock¬ 
ing the world with Walton statuettes. 
On the walls of the library are also a num¬ 
ber of rare old fishing and hunting- prints, 
English and American. What are more likely 
to catch the eye, however, are some stuffed 
fish in all the brilliant hues of life. There are 
only a few specimens at present, but eventually 
Mr. Fearing expects to have a complete collec¬ 
tion of fishes common to Rhode Island waters. 
The process emploj'ed is quite different from 
the ordinary method used for preserving fish, 
and now being introduced into the American 
Museum of Natural History and the Cambridge 
Museum. The work was done for Mr. Fearing 
by Sherman F. Denton, and the result is far 
superior to the ordinary stuffed specimens of 
fish. 
Even more artistic are a number of bronze 
casts of fish, the work of Dr. Reinhardt Cast, 
assistant at the Naples Aquarium. 
Of the two “firsts” one has undergone the 
customary refurbishing at the hands of the 
bookbinder, in which frayed pages have been 
mended, dirt spots removed, and the pages re¬ 
stored as nearly as possible to the condition 
in which they left the bookseller’s. 
The other first is an naturel—a humanized 
book with an occasional annotation, a thumb 
print here and there and the other marks of 
usage, and on this account endeared to its 
owner. Of the second edition there is one 
cop3q of the third there are two, of the fourth 
and fifth two each. It is Mr. Bearing’s inten¬ 
tion to possess eventually a copy of _ every 
edition of Walton which has ever been issued, 
perhaps some 150 in all, even down to the 
cheapest and least consequential, and he is al¬ 
ready well on the road to this goal with upward 
of ninety. 
The first treasure that favored visitors to 
the library are shown is, like many others, al¬ 
most unique and without price. It is Glanville’s 
“De Proprietatibus Rerum,” a parchment volume 
antedating the art of printing. It is a large 
volume, beautifully printed with a pen, with 
handsomely illuminated initials, and is a 
treatise on the various departments of human 
knowledge. In the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries this volume was rented to the 
students of the University of Sorbonne in 
Paris for a certain sum per day, quite after the 
manner of private circulating libraries of the 
present. Its admission to Mr. Fearing’s library 
is gained by its description of methods of fish 
culture in vogue with the monks of the early 
Middle Ages. In the same class is the “De 
Agricultura” of Petrus Crescentius, a fifteenth 
century work done on white vellum. 
The earliest of printed books is the copy of 
Pliny’s natural history brought out by Nicholas 
Jensen in Venice in 1472. But for the fact that 
Pliny wrote of fishes in his famous work, this 
early issue of the great Jensen, despite its 
value from the bibliophile’s viewpoint, would 
have been excluded from the Fearing collection, 
which, because of the beauty of the book, would 
have been exceedingly regrettable. 
The earliest English book on fishing ap¬ 
peared in 1496. This was “The Treatyse of 
Fysshynge with an Angle,” by Julyans Barnes. 
It was printed as a supplement at the end of 
Wynken de Worde’s reprint of the well-known 
“Book of St. Albans.” Mr. Fearing’s copy is 
in good condition. 
Here also may be ^een the earliest known 
book devoted to the subject of fowling and 
fishing. It was written originally in Flemish, 
and printed at Antwerp in 1492. It was trans¬ 
lated into English by Alfred Denison, and Mr. 
Fearing is justly proud of the translator’s 
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