Angling Literature in England, and Descriptions of Fishing by the
Ancients. By Osmund Lambert. (Sampson Low and Co.)—Mr. Lambert's " Descriptions of Fishing by the Ancients" do not seem to proceed out of a very full knowledge of the subject. We hear something, of course, about Oppian's " Halieutica," and about Ausonins's poem on the Moselle. Mr. Lambert also quotes tElian's very curious description of fly-fishing in Macedonia ; but we see no mention of more than one thing which we should have expected to find. Cicero, we may infer, from one of his letters to Atticus (ii., 6), was fond of sea-fishing. Staying at Antium, .he tells us that it was mot the time for catching lacerti, whatever they may have been. Who has not had this experience at the sea-side ? It never is the time for catching anything, when one happens to be there. Then Pliny the Younger was probably an angler. It was one of the at- tractions of one of his villas at Comum, that you could fish out of the dining-room window. Martial has several notices of angling, reproving in one place a sportsman who had the impious audacity to poach the sacred fish of the Emperor. The modern part indicates knowledge gained at first hand ; but here there are some strange omissions. Mr. Cholmondeley-Pennell's meritorious " Book of the Pike" is mentioned with well-deserved praise, but why nothing of the not less valuable " Book of the Roach ?" We hope that Mr. Lambert will have an opportunity of enlarging and completing this pleasant and readable contribution to angling literature.
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