AN ANGLER'S MEMORIES.t
IN a Government paper issued some months ago it was estimated that there are in Great Britain at the present time about 400,000 anglers—men whose chief recreation is fishing. Probably there were not a quarter of that number fifty years ago. And, corresponding to the smaller numbers, the fishing then was far better than it is now Mr. Senior—it is sad to think that we can write only of the name, for the author has died- since his book was published—belongs to the great days. And he can do great things for his readers ; he can take them back to the time when 'fishing was easy to get, and good when you got it, when stream_ and ponds were full and creels were heavy in the evening. More, for besides the fish, he can describe • (1) Mrs. Hodges. Margaret Macnamara Plays for a People's Theatre. London : C. W. Daniel. [2a net.)—(2) The 'Witch. Same publisher. [1s. 6d.j —(3) light-Gray or Dark f Same publisher. fls. ed.]—(4) Love Fibs. Same publisher. [is. ad.]—(5) The Princess Zoubaroff. By Ronald Firbank.' London : Grant Richards. [6.s.] t Lines in Pleasant Places. By William Senior. London : Simpkin. Marshall, Hamilton. Kent. and Co. [10s. 6d. net.]
the catching ; he has his own charm of writing about what he does and advises others to do ; you find yourself, as you read, learning to know not only an angler, but a friend. As " Red Spinner " he has been familiar for many years to many readers ; and here he has given us the fruit of a long experience—memories of his first salmon in Tweed and Tay, of sea trout in Norway, and lunge in Canada ; of visions of the clouds of mayfly that would greet you at Hungerford Railway Station ; or of Houghton and Stockbridge, and a rise of grannom whose shucks " would drift into eddies and collect almost as solid as a weed-bed." " Suoh sights," " Red Spinner " remarks, " are not to be seen now, and have not been seen for years." The life of the stream shrinks.
Mr. Senior is equally happy in an essay on the lighter misfortunes of the fisherman, or in counsel as to his equipment ; or in reminiscence of a fight with a big fish. The chapter in which he describes his battle with a 31i lb. Tweed salmon, his line drowned round a rock, his taking to the boat to free the line, with the fish fifty yards across the stream, and the final pinning of the salmon under the landing-net to the shingle, is one of the best, in the book. Another excellent piece of writing is his tribute to the late F. M. Halford, the recognized authority on dry-fly fishing, in which he tells of an evening when he persuaded Halford to let him try the unorthodox and almost-unforgivable wet fly ; and how, fishing " wet," he killed-the only brace of trout taken that day. But his chief charm remains the same throughout this book as in its predecessors ; he is the friendly chronicler of easy, full baskets, of the old, great days.
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