19 JANUARY 1895, Page 21

Walton and the Earlier Fishing Writers. By It. B. Marston.

(Elliot Stock.)—Mr. Marston introduces his volume by some pleasant reminiscences of his own ; how he caught Prussian carp before he could read, fished for dace from the meadows opposite Kew Gardens, and has given us accumulating ex- periences of angling in many places and at many times. He then proceeds to tell various fishing anecdotes, and to talk about books of angling as, e.g., Dame Juliana Berners, Leonard Maxwell, John Dennys, Gervase Monkhouse, and others, till in the seventh chapter we get to Isaac Walton himself. We may say that to the history of Walton and of his great book the rest of the volume is devoted. Both biography and bibliography are admirably done.